


Some Days are Diamonds

by Likerealpeopledo



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, David and Patrick have Gilmore Girls Opinions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Alive, Future Fic, Gardens & Gardening, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Patrick Brewer Happy Acts of Service, Recreational Drug Use, Sick Character, Sickfic, Tantric sex eventually, There is a lot of fluffy warm goodness here, emotional healing through happy cows (aka cheese), happy hopeful ending, mindful sex, never fear, random Les Mis lyrics, too much support of LED lighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:13:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29157162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo
Summary: David and Patrick learn to navigate new challenges after David is diagnosed with a chronic pain condition, while still maintaining their love, intimacy, partnership, senses of humor, and ultimately, their optimism.OrThe softest darn story I’ve ever written.
Relationships: Alexis Rose & David Rose, Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd & David Rose
Comments: 283
Kudos: 335





	1. where we invest our love

**Author's Note:**

> Please see end for notes.
> 
> This story is complete.
> 
> If you’re hesitant about subject matter, please see End Notes, but this is really a story about love and care.

David wakes far, far, far, too early to the sounds of running water and...the French Revolution.

_Believe of me what you will!_

Okay, no problem. He pulls the comforter back up to his chin and closes his eyes. _Five more minutes._

_There is a duty that I’m sworn to do._

_You know nothing of my life!_

So it’s clear that five more peaceful minutes isn’t in the cards. Maybe if he starts some stretches while he’s still in bed...

_All I did was steal some bread!_

“My duty is to the law, you have no rights!” David sings out from his blankets, as if suddenly possessed. 

_You know nothing of the law!_

“Come with me 246—” Goddamnit. It isn’t even eight a.m.. Is this really what marriage is?

Okay yes, David thinks as he gives up pressing the imaginary snooze button, this is exactly what marriage is. Just slowly sharing every aspect of your life with another person, joyfully and without reservation, one brain cell at a time.

David’s combination alarm clock/husband makes a sudden transition into _Who Am I,_ so at least David is released from the responsibility of holding up his end of a duet while he attempts to extract himself from bed.

And bless the faux-Frenchman in his shower, because the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee is already wafting its way up the stairs.

It is definitely the push he needs to get both feet on the floor. By the time he works his way through his regular set of posture and flexibility exercises, Patrick is already finished with his vigorous morning skincare routine. His current four minutes are down from eight since he’s attempting to grow a set of French Revolution-era mutton chops that...are barely coming to fruition on his sweet face. 

“Tell me if I’m wrong but I could have sworn I heard Javert in here—” Patrick can barely contain himself and David is already annoyed. 

“Ah, no, definitely not. And if you had, you would definitely never speak of it again.” David shushes him with a finger held aloft, back still pressed against the wall. Patrick offers him a hand but David shakes him off then pushes himself up from the modified wall sit with his elbows. 

“Never? Not even when we practice it in the shower?”

David smiles, in spite of himself. Visions of naked, soapy Patrick do tiny jazz hands in his head. “Damn you. Don’t you hold that over my head.”

“That was the morning we learned the benefits of shower bench blow jobs, if I remember correctly.”

“Well, it’s just when you’re singing that song your little face gets all pink and you’re just so...righteous—it’s a real button I didn’t know I had.”

“And that, I am definitely holding over your head.” With that, Patrick kisses David’s cheek and dips into the walk-in to get dressed.

One steamy-hot shower and a leisurely cup of coffee later, they’re at the store by 8:45. 

By lunch, David has survived Roland’s bimonthly fungal cream visit, an influx of skincare questions, and several unscheduled vendor calls, while Patrick works on the books in back. 

For lunch, David orders sandwiches from the cafe and eats sitting on the stool that Patrick has placed with undue pomp and circumstance behind the register. 

“So which one of your body parts inspired this?” David asks, gesturing benignly to his new seat.

Patrick blushes and tries not to choke on his tea. “Ah, yes, none. Jake was very professional this time.”

David gives Patrick’s face careful evaluation. “No he wasn’t.”

“No he wasn’t.” Patrick agrees. “But...do you like it?”

“It’s gorgeous.” And it is. It’s richly textured and sleek and could not match the store’s aesthetic more accurately than if David commissioned it himself. Which he did not. 

David feels good so he doesn’t push it. It’s been several good days, consecutively, in a row, and it’s easy not to argue when Patrick seems so pleased with himself. Plus it definitely feels more like a gift than a helpful suggestion.

“I love it,” David declares and Patrick’s shoulders immediately relax, a genuine smile blooming on his face.

Patrick hooks his own feet around the legs of David’s new stool and drags him slightly closer, an intent look in his eye. “While I was making coffee this morning, I noticed tonight might be...pork bun night.”

“What gave it away? The giant slab of meat or…” 

None of this is a euphemism. David is planning to recreate their favorite meal from their honeymoon tonight, Momofuku pork buns. The pork is marinating, and tonight, if he manages not to fuck it up, he’ll make the bao. 

“I think I used the last cucumber in our salad yesterday, so you’ll have to stop at Brebner’s on your way home this afternoon.” Patrick starts to reach for a pen to write it down but David shakes his head. 

“No, I’ve got it. One phallic vegetable isn’t exactly rocket science.”

“Yeah I know but—”

David stands then, disposing of his to-go wrapping, and sanitizing his hands. “I still have to reorganize the goat butter hand cream display before I go and you know it takes me an hour just to get the labels facing out.”

A faint smile touches the edges of Patrick’s lips. “Yeah, of course.” He stands too, running his hands down the sides of David’s arms. “I’m glad you like the stool. Maybe we could have Jake do a few for the kitchen island at home, too.”

They are already in each other’s space so it doesn’t take much to lean into it, wrapping his arms around Patrick’s neck and pulling him closer. “Mmm,” he breathes as Patrick relaxes against him. “I’m sure Jake would love an invitation to study you in your natural environment.”

The bell jingles and the phone rings and before David can properly kiss his husband, they are thrown right back into their day.

* * *

At home, David curls up in one of his nests, a collection of cozy blankets and pillows that traditionally serves as a space to rest, reading _The Guest List_ until a call from Alexis draws him away from the resentments and petty jealousies of the bridal party.

“You do know you can just order Momofuku from Goldbelly, right?” Alexis starts as FaceTime opens. It isn’t so much a question as it is a command, and probably because David has sent her fourteen texts in the past few days requesting various ingredients, including Rockey’s Milk Punch so he can add melon creamy soda cocktails to his oeuvre.

“Mmkay but that isn’t really in the spirit of what I’m trying to accomplish here.”

Her eyes brighten. Behind her, David can just make out the _g_ in Google, the view from Alexis’ Interflix office in the Chelsea Market building. “Ooh how is your little list coming, David? Are you following your bliss?” 

In the corner of his screen, the horrified face he’s making is fairly easy to read. “You make it sound like I’m dousing myself in essential oils, or like, running off to Coachella in a hemp poncho.”

“Ew. I don’t think that’s a good look for a middle-aged man, David. Is Coachella on your list? Because even if you weren’t in any pain, I feel like it would be painful for you, personally. Or maybe spiritually, now.”

“Yes it is. Deeply painful. I simply cannot abide another clipped-in hair feather.” He readjusts in his mound of pillows, another thoughtful purchase of his husband’s...and another that lacked prior consultation. “Anyway. I’m not...doing that.”

“Deny it all you want but I totally saw like, forty-five minutes of the Power of Myth, and what you’re doing is totally following your bliss. Doors will open for you.” She swirls her hand in front of the screen as if she plans on booping. 

God, he misses her. But he also deeply regrets telling Alexis about his list. It is more than likely he disclosed it by accident on one of his foggier brain days, when information just seems to evaporate on a fine mist of discomfort and fatigue. 

“But like you are thinking it is some kind of Fuck-It List, right?”

“A bucket list? No! And for the last time, I am not dying! Or Morgan Freeman.”

“No, David, a _Fuck-It_ List. Just like, fuck this unpronounceable condition I have, I’m still going to do what I want. Like Mary Kate did after she separated from Olivier.”

David considers the items on his list, like _picnic on Primrose Hill_ and _attend the Julia Stiles-A-Thon_ and _get an Apothecary product recommendation in the Goop newsletter_ and _learn to snorkel_ and _finally finish all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls plus that godforsaken revival._ He decides not to disagree. “Okay, yes. That is mostly it. But I’m not calling it that. I’m not naming it anything. Unless you know any of Gwyneth’s publicity people from Interflix.”

“I mean, maybe, but I think I want to save that Gwynnie gossip for when I need to call in my own favor, David.”

“Yes of course. Your turn to take a selfish.” 

“Where did your husband go? He’s usually right by your side.”

“Alexis, it is four p.m. on a weekday afternoon. He is at our place of business.”

“Aww, such a cute little hamster-person, content to spin in his wheel.”

“Excuse me, he is very busy since we are on the cusp of breaking into the online market thanks to our consistent popularity with RMG patrons. Building an empire is at the top of my list.”

“Well then what do you need all this hoisin sauce for? You’re killing me with all the trips to Chinatown, David.”

“Becoming a retail conglomerate and recreating a nostalgic dinner are two different things, Alexis. That’s why it is a list and not a...Fuck-It _item._ ”

“Oh, so you are going to call it your Fuck-It List then.” She is gloating and honestly, David doesn’t even mind at this point.

“Ugh.” 

* * *

The buns are sticky. 

David pokes suspiciously at the nearest mound of yeast and sadness one last time, as if the last four times he poked at it mistakenly revealed a subpar product. Just as before, the pillowy dough attaches itself gamely to the side of his finger. He sighs. Clearly, the fifth time isn’t the charm.

It’s too late to throw these out and start over, especially since he just heard keys jangling in the door.

“The time is now! The cuke is here!” Patrick sings from the entryway as he takes off his coat. 

Well, at least Patrick isn’t missing any Les Mis rehearsal time since David forgot to stop at Brebner’s to buy the stupid cucumber. Momofuku’s pork buns are nothing without the pickled cucumber. And the actual bun, which is currently an affront to an entire civilization.

“What do you know about sticky buns?” David asks before Patrick is even fully in the room. He is far too distracted by kitchen failure to be polite. Or provide context. 

“Well.” God, he can already hear the smirk in Patrick’s tone. David did leave a mile-wide hole about buns for Patrick to leap through, snark a-blazing. He should know better. “Am I curing them or causing them?”

David glares at his husband, who is now brandishing a fresh cucumber over the mis en place still scattered around the kitchen island. “Never mind. I’ll just steam these and we’ll be poisoned. It will be fine.”

“I doubt we’ll be poisoned. I’m sure they’re still great.”

Patrick drops the cucumber onto the counter so that he can cross the space and encircle David’s waist with his arms. He smells like cool spring air and juniper shampoo and the tip of his nose is chilly against the warm skin of David’s neck. “I appreciate that you want to keep reliving our honeymoon, meal by meal, but I am perfectly happy to eat the pork belly on its own.”

“Bunless pork buns?!” David’s blood pressure ratchets up three notches.

“Stranger things have happened.” Patrick’s hand creeps under the knit of David’s cardigan and rubs at the small of his back, short little strokes over his t-shirt like he’s petting an ornery housecat. David relaxes in spite of himself, and Patrick leans up on tiptoe to kiss away the remainder of his furrowed brow, just over the bridge of David’s glasses.

He isn’t just reliving their honeymoon, although he would, gladly. No, somewhere in the midst of that blissful week they spent, David realized what he missed most about New York was not just the food and the art, but his sister. Exploring culinary delights at home had the added bonus of enlisting Alexis to send him ingredients that could only be found in tiny suppliers and hidden-away spots in Chinatown, and if it was a little bit of payback for all the times he’d searched for just the right Celine cami for security footage continuity in the Palace of Brunei, so be it. It means regular texts, emails, phone calls, and boxes of Lee Kum Kee hoisin sauce delivered to his door.

Outside of David’s head, Patrick is on a mission of his own.

“We could deviate from the list and relive a different, non-food portion of that night if you wanted.”

“I want—” David intends to sound officious but Patrick has wedged himself between David’s latest culinary failure and David’s lips, and it is difficult to argue with either his proximity or the alternative he’s proposing. “Mmm. What did we do after Momofuku?” 

“We walked over to the Strand and bought a stack of books that we had to pay extra to fly home because someone ignored baggage weight requirements,” Patrick says with a brief but pointed nip to David’s clavicle. 

“Which you remain embittered about.” David pulls back slightly with Patrick’s almost-four-year-old rant still ringing in his ears.

His nose wrinkles adorably. Frustratedly. Fondly. “I’m not _embittered._ I mean, maybe by an air travel industry that to this day holds us hostage with a monopolistic structure—” 

David is hungry and horny and they’re getting off track. He _might_ bite at Patrick’s lips and lick into his mouth and kiss him slow and soft, in a fighting dirty kind of way. If he did things like that. (He does. He does do things like that.) All he knows is that it works.

Patrick doesn’t complain, unless his knees gradually sinking is considered his strongly worded letter. David uses the movement to his advantage and leans back against the counter, giving Patrick more access to his throat, an open invitation to leave his mark.

Time and travel angst seem to dissipate as Patrick spends a few moments worshiping at the site, tongue and warm breath humid against David’s skin. 

“Hmm.” David waits none too patiently as Patrick collects what is left of his wits. “What did we do after the Strand?”

Patrick hands rest on David’s hips like they’re at a junior high dance, but this time he refuses to leave room for the Holy Spirit, or whoever kids who went to Catholic school got brainwashed into believing didn’t want them fucking each other. As if gymnasiums were synonymous with sex dens.

“Hmm, we stopped at Veniero’s for cannolis and you swore me to secrecy because you said we had just been, and I quote, ‘tragically basic.’”

“Well, we were, but I don’t regret it for a second.” 

“I don’t regret any of it for a second,” Patrick says with unnerving sincerity. One day that sincerity will stop catching David off-guard. Maybe he doesn’t want it to.

Nudging Patrick backward by the belt loops, David repositions them both so that Patrick’s ass is more balanced against the counter. “I think my favorite aspect of that night was teaching you not to lock your knees as I’m sucking you off.”

The tips of Patrick’s ears go pink with the memory and he begins the protest David can recite right along with him. “Listen, no. We have been over this. I lost my balance.”

“You whited out!” This is, by far, David’s favorite marital argument and only eighty-seven percent because he knows he’s right.

“I felt the slightest bit faint and the wall of the elevator caught me; it was fine.” Patrick licks his lips and just the dart of his tongue is enough to make David’s cock twitch with anticipation. “And earth-shattering, is that what you need to hear?”

“Is it the truth?”

Patrick groans. Guttural but still hot. “God, _fuck_ yes.”

“Hmm.” David rewards this last burst of honesty with a trail of teasing kisses along Patrick’s jaw, dipping down occasionally to suck at the sensitive skin of his neck. Patrick’s hands are everywhere, all at once, and David can feel the tattoo of Patrick’s pulse thrumming under his tongue. “I mean, if you feel like you have anything to prove…” he trails off by allowing his fingers to make a quick path to the buckle of Patrick’s belt, never moving his mouth further than a few millimeters from Patrick’s throat.

“I feel like I do,” Patrick says thickly. “Do you?” he challenges as his hips inch toward David, seeking him out.

David briefly reviews the consequences of kneeling on hardwood and promptly disregards them. He really, really wants this. And maybe those Catholic kids in the gymnasium had a point. Wood _is_ sexy. “Yes. I really think I do.”

Patrick’s eyes glaze over when he chokes out, “That is...that is really good to hear.”

“Yes and just think of the other things I would like to hear, once I get you in my mouth.”

The glazed eyes almost roll back into his head. “David. Fuck.”

The last kiss before David slides to his knees doesn’t have much finesse but it is exhilarating nonetheless. It propels him to make quick work of Patrick’s belt and zipper, yanking at his jeans so they pool at his boots. 

Everything about what they’re doing is sloppy and frantic but once he finally touches bare skin, David caresses the faint hairs of Patrick’s thick thigh with slow and utter surety. He loves how the muscle of Patrick’s quad is sweetly rounded above his knee, the shape and the breadth of its obvious strength. How Patrick loves being touched and kissed there, a wild erogenous zone on the familiar landscape of his body. How Patrick practically wobbles with need, steadying himself with both hands on David’s shoulders and making a delicate, almost wounded sound under his breath.

“Breathe, baby,” David reminds him, extricating Patrick’s already leaking cock from the confines of his boxer briefs. It’s been...too long and he’s feeling particularly inspired. “Keep these pretty knees loose,” he teases, fingers barely skimming pale skin in an effort to draw this out as long as possible. 

He’s already going off-book from the rushed and frenetic elevator blowjob, but he knows he can create a similar result with these new, excruciatingly slow variables. 

Patrick’s now bowed legs are already trembling.

“Are you sure? We could still—“ Patrick gives a shaky exhale as David takes him in hand, this time with purpose. “Ha, yep, you got it.”

Now this recipe—taking Patrick apart—David knows he has perfected. A quick scrape of teeth to the inside of Patrick’s thigh before a deliberate stroke of tongue to his cock always turns Patrick into a writhing, quivering, beautiful mess. 

David looks up because he doesn’t have the advantage of the mirrored elevator walls this time, to see the way Patrick bites his lower lip and closes his eyes against the untamed, blooming, inescapable pleasure. From below, David can see that Patrick’s chin is pressed against his chest as his fingertips dig into David’s shoulders, hitching gasps pushing past his lips in quick little bursts. 

He soothes at Patrick’s thighs with deliberate softness, swirling and sucking until Patrick’s hips buck forward and Patrick cries out. Normally, this would be when David gets himself off, but he wants to prolong it tonight, to have Patrick bring him to edge but not let him fall. 

David knows what’s coming, but he’s still thrilled when, after Patrick comes, he drops to his knees to kiss David, uncoordinated and a little sloppy; he strokes David’s cheek with his thumb and props his forehead against David’s brow and says _thank you_ and _I love you_ and kisses him again, so very serenely. It’s the gratitude that grabs hold of David every time, seeking out his solar plexus like a guided missile; David knows Patrick will say it, will show it, but it always feels like a gift. 

That hasn’t changed.

They collapse onto the floor tangled in each other’s legs. Patrick goes completely slack over David’s lap, a blanket of a person, soft and warm and intrinsically cozy. Huddling into his husband and almost not caring that he is still blazingly aroused, David allows himself to get lost in Patrick’s rapturous, awestruck expression and murmured affection.

After an uncoordinated struggle that David wishes he could record and show him later as hard-won proof of his initial hypothesis, Patrick regains enough of his motor skills to jockey himself to a sitting position, taking his heat with him. Half-lidded and sex-dumb, Patrick blearily thumps his head, still too heavy on loose shoulders, back against the kitchen cabinet. 

His chest is heaving and his pants are twisted around his knees and oop, now he’s pawing at David’s lap. 

“You take such good care of me. Wanna take care of you.” He’s babbling, like he does, and David widens the set of his legs, angling his hips for better access as Patrick searches him out. “I wanna get inside you.”

Never mind that Patrick _just_ came. After the elevator incident, once he regained consciousness, round two happened in as much time as it took to traverse a hall, unlock their hotel room, and locate the lube.

“Hmm, the kitchen floor is maybe not ideal,” David says, cupping the back of Patrick’s neck with loose fingers. It isn’t as if David doesn’t want to get off; he’s fairly desperate to have Patrick’s hands or lips or anything on him, and he definitely, definitely wants to be fucked. But these days he has to give more consideration to practicality and efficiency.

David has to catch the interested, fumbling hands already disrupting the waistband of his sweater. Patrick glances up, wonder held in his saucer-sized pupils as he computes his options. “Ooh. The kitchen table!”

He doesn’t _want_ to rain on Patrick’s parade. “Hi, we eat there.”

“‘M gonna eat you out there,” Patrick sex-growls, finding his legs and starting to pull David along. “I’ll burn it as kindling after. Lemme have you, please.”

His husband’s thirst-fueled stubbornness and non-existent refractory period is, after all, super fucking hot so he hoists himself up off the floor and starts pulling off his clothing as they go.

Patrick lumbers into the living space to grab a few throw pillows, pausing to kick off the jeans still strangling his thick calves, then quickly magics a bottle of lube from the vanity in the nearby half-bath. David would have been less surprised if he pulled it out of thin air. 

“How—why—when?” 

It doesn’t matter, though, because Patrick is back, crowding his space and biting at his neck, brand, shiny, new erection straining between their bellies.

“You’re sure? This is what you want?” Patrick asks. 

“Yes. Very much. I want this. I want you.”

Patrick shivers. He pushes David back gently, arranges a pillow under his hip, moves another under his neck, treating David like he’s precious and ensuring comfort even in his sex-starved state. “This is good?”

“Yes, it’s perfect. You’re perfect.” His breath catches, overwhelmed by how cherished he feels amid the chaos of unbridled need. 

“Tell me what you want.” Patrick runs a tender hand over his ribcage, raising goosebumps in his wake, and his other hand goes to David’s hole. “Is this what you want?” He asks, stroking against his entrance, and David’s hips already thrust at nothing.

“Yes. Excellent, do two,” David breathes. It feels like it’s been forever, like he could come just from this, from Patrick’s thick fingers pressing inside.

Fingers curl and twist and push, drawing breathy wanton sounds from David that reverberate in the still air. The pace turns into something more careful and more meticulous as Patrick settles in, encouraged by David’s pleading. He grazes David’s prostate expertly and a thumb teases at his rim, sending waves of rippling pleasure cascading through him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, oh fuck.”

“‘S okay?” Patrick looks up, a mixture of concern and pride.

“Fuck,” he mutters again, body still sparking and shocky. “So good, don’t stop, please— never stop.”

His fingers flex and stretch and David grinds down against them, finally taking a third. He feels weightless now, like a cloud skittering across the sky, like Patrick is going to have to chase after him to bring him back down. But that isn’t...that isn’t what he wants. He wants to be caught, grounded. He wants to feel everything.

He concentrates on the sound of Patrick’s hard breath, on the idle hand Patrick is using to steady him, on the light scratch of the pillow between the hardwood and his naked body, on the pressure and the fullness and the bone-deep arousal. 

Patrick withdraws his fingers and David whines in their absence, but then Patrick is kissing him, urging David’s hips up with a gentle hand and a swirl of his tongue. 

“‘S good?” 

David nods. He runs his hands over Patrick’s back, the corded muscles and the smooth skin, grasping more tightly as Patrick lines up and enters him, finally, rolling his own hips as a slow shudder wends its way down David’s spine.

Soon his legs hook around broad shoulders as Patrick valiantly, desperately, expertly proves his own intricate knowledge of how to best take David apart in thrust after thrust. 

David’s heart races, his thighs are trembling, and Patrick’s expert hand is on his cock, filling him as much with need as it does with pleasure and care. 

“You’re so beautiful,” Patrick tells him, rudely removing his hand to stroke the crease of his hip, his ass where Patrick is still buried and rocking gently, the curve of his thigh. 

A whine emerges from his throat, involuntarily, and Patrick responds by taking David’s hand and wrapping it around his dick, this time eliciting a low groan. Their hands work in tandem then, bringing David ruthlessly to orgasm, and Patrick comes not long after with a low shout and a judder.

“Sorry it wasn’t exactly like New York, baby,” Patrick slurs into David’s belly button afterward. The fact that he still has use of his legs is incredible, even if he probably won’t tomorrow. David is damp with sweat, covered in come, and thrilled he’s going to feel every inch of this in the morning.

“No, no, this was better.” He pats loosely at Patrick’s arm. From his place atop the table, David spies the lonely, abandoned Brebner’s cucumber and the bamboo basket of under-proven bao. His traitorous stomach growls anyway.

Patrick laughs, his smile pressing warmly against David’s skin. “Lemme clean you up and get you fed.” 

Five minutes later, David is still naked, but now on the couch under their fluffiest heated blanket, being hand-fed tender cuts of perfectly braised pork by his equally naked husband. 

David licks his lips, delighting in the delicate balance of salty and sweet, as Patrick chases David’s movements with his own mouth. They exchange lazy kisses until David pulls back to take in Patrick’s blissed out expression, but they’re too close and he’s blurry, like a pointillist painting. 

“So which ones did we cross off your list again? I feel like we turned an accidental double play tonight.” 

“Hmm,” David considers as he dips down to kiss Patrick’s nipple where it peeks over the throw blanket; Patrick’s hand floats to the back of David’s head as a reflex. “Um. None.”

“Excuse me? We just ate deconstructed pork buns! And there was definitely spontaneous furniture sex. I didn’t imagine that.”

“You make it sound like the dining table came alive and copulated with the chairs.”

“Anything is possible. I think my brain may have exited my body, so I wouldn’t have noticed.” Patrick pushes back a lock of David’s hair as he gets that determined set about his mouth. “Seriously though, we accomplished nothing? Not one item on the list?”

“The pork buns were an unmitigated failure so they’re staying on. But fine, I’ll add ‘sex on the kitchen table’ so we can check it off.”

“Thank you.” Patrick sighs, content. “That is the gentlemanly thing to do.”

David grabs his journal where it lies conveniently on the coffee table and flips to the list he made on his therapist’s recommendation, scanning down the page for the first blank line. Under the entry _View the Northern Lights (Norway or Northwest Territories?)_ he jots _Hot hot kitchen sex; get Patrick to have multiple orgasms_ and makes a particularly emphatic checkmark next to it. Perhaps naming it the Fuck-It List does have some merit after all.

“This was an excellent addition, thank you.” He kisses Patrick again, his belly and heart full. 

* * *

David wakes to the French Revolution for the second morning in a row. 

Today, he doesn’t have the energy to join.

Instead, he flexes his toes and tries to decide if his hip feels heavier than it did yesterday morning and if the hollow, thrumming pain in the small of his back is worse than it has been.

 _Listening to his body_ is a skill he never expected to need to use, but here he is.

He is still struggling to roll over when Patrick enters the bedroom, towel wrapped around his waist and a rivulet of water winding its way from his hairline as if he just stepped out of a men’s deodorant commercial. 

“Morning sunshine,” Patrick greets. When he sees that David is still in bed, a brief look of panic flashes behind his eyes. 

David attempts and fails to sit up, which has Patrick rushing over, half-dressed.

“Is it...where’s your pain?” This is what the doctors and Patrick’s rote memorization of the _Taking Control of Ankylosing Spondylitis_ brochure have taught them. To speak in numbers and pain levels because that gives Patrick a metric and understanding of where David is on a given day. It’s fitting that, like everything in their relationship, Patrick goes by numbers, David goes by feel.

“Just like, a four. Maybe four-and-a-half.” 

Six months ago, David wouldn’t have been able to get out of bed at a pain level above three, although six months ago, a three felt more like a six or an eight. He’s learned his threshold for pain is a moving target since flares of symptoms come and go at will. They are predictable in that they aren’t predictable, although too much energy expended almost always ends in some kind of physical consequence. 

It’s the degrees that vary.

“Hmm,” Patrick says, offering an arm if David wants it. David is stiffest in the mornings, but with his condition, the more he moves, the better he starts to feel. He lingers as David gets undressed. “I bet the rheumatologist will have some ideas today.”

David doesn't like the new words that have become part of their lives— chronic pain, AS, rheumatologist, biologic, and especially ankylosing spondylitis—but Patrick seems to embrace them easily and often. He filters them into his vocabulary with the same vigor he approached the word-of-the-day calendar Ray got him at Twyla's Secret Santa exchange. To Patrick, those words seem to represent answers to months of questions, and they mean treatment and a routine that works. Or works most of the time. To David, they mean the resurfacing of insecurities he once counted as behind him and a life slowly being restructured by a progressive form of arthritis the doctor (and his husband) continue to label as _manageable._

David has never felt particularly manageable in a general sense, so this kind of specificity feels out of his league.

“You promised waffles after!” David reminds him as he shuffles to the hot shower Patrick left running for him.

“Of course.” 

Patrick leaves reluctantly once the shower door closes; David supposes he should be glad Patrick doesn’t insist on monitoring his progress. Patrick is getting better, after months of learning symptoms and how to adjust to them, but he loves care and control and logic a little too much to just blindly accept this is just how things are now.

That David is sick. And sick is… not entirely accurate. It can be easy to ignore when sex is on the table (literally), but the ankylosing spondylitis hijacking his immune system to the detriment of his joints cannot be ignored for long. 

There are days when he is debilitated, unable to do more than sleep, and there are days upon weeks where he can’t sleep at all because he can’t find a position comfortable enough to be in. It is harder to do anything now. Rolling over in bed when he’s stiff or in pain can take ten minutes some days. And then there are the times when it feels like almost nothing has changed.

Yesterday, blissfully, was one of those days. Today, clearly, is not.

The steam from the shower helps unknit some of the stiffness and by the time he’s sat under the spray with his facial serum on for the prescribed fifteen minutes, he’s able to do a modified version of his morning stretches.

It takes a few extra minutes to get dressed; Patrick helps him with his shoes and they tell each other it’s because it’s a thirty minute drive to the doctor’s office and they’re already pushing against 9 a.m. 

* * *

It is a standard visit to the rheumatologist in that Patrick brings his _David’s Rheumatology_ notebook and appears to scribble down every word the doctor says, verbatim. It’s also standard in that there isn’t much anyone can do.

“The pattern we are looking at right now is a pretty typical first year of recorded AS symptom spread. You may see your areas of inflammation move around, like how it’s been moving gradually from your sacroiliac region to your shoulders or knees,” Dr. O’Toole glances down at her chart. “Or your eyes.” David automatically pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “But right now, I’m cautiously optimistic about how consistent your inflammation markers have stayed and I like that we seem to be honing in on the right medication for you. You were lucky to be diagnosed as quickly as you were. Just keep managing those stress levels and keep up with the stretching and exercise, and I think we’ll see good results.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Patrick underline _manage stress_ three times and _stretching and exercise_ twice. 

On their way out, Patrick grabs another handful of brochures to add to his mounting collection and David tries not to notice the one labelled _For Caregivers_. 

Well, he tries and fails. Patrick already has to help him with eye drops and getting socks and shoes on and off some days. They are tiny things. Things that pre-AS, David would have encouraged, even. Patrick always offers, enthusiastically even, but a pit grows in David’s stomach every time he imagines how these small gestures might compound as AS stretches over the rest of their lives.

He puts in his notes app under his list of darkish thoughts to share with Sandy, his therapist, before he starts haranguing Patrick about breakfast and promises of waffles, despite their possession of the great demon gluten. Which, David loudly notes, the doctor did not prohibit in any shape, form, or fashion.

Luckily, Patrick seems relieved the visit went so well, so it doesn’t take much negotiation to get him to agree to the Elmdale House of Pancakes. 

Once they are seated in a cozy booth with slightly less duct tape than Cafe Tropical, the waitress stops by to take their orders and Patrick immediately waxes philosophical.

“Why do you think they call them Elmdale Waffles here? Do you think there’s been tension with Belgium?” 

“Maybe.” David thinks about taking out his phone and looking up Belgian waffles just to make sure there wasn’t some waffle-recipe appropriation landing Belgium firmly in the wrong, but his attention is still pretty fixed to Patrick. “Just so you know, when we do our European tour, I want all the crepes and _pain au chocolat_ I can handle. I don’t care what country we’re in.”

“So skip the art and the architecture and go straight for the breakfast sweets?” 

“We can see all that other stuff online,” David says, fluttering a dismissive hand. “Give me all the sugar.”

Patrick, who knows very well David was referring to the goodness of the saccharine variety, lifts himself off the bench seat and leans forward, smacking a quick kiss onto David’s lopsided mouth. “Anytime, any place. Just not Belgium.”

“So you’re taking Elmdale’s side?” The thrill of having Patrick’s lips against his flares at the base of his stomach and he squeezes Patrick’s kneecap under the table. 

“I mean, I’ll read up on their literature and take in their points, but I root for the home team.”

“I think you’ve just described how wars start.” David shakes his head at himself. “How did we get here? Why am I talking about the Elmdale-Belgian war?”

“They started it by co-opting the waffles.” 

They’ve been planning their European trip since before David was diagnosed, saving up because David had no desire to do Europe on a shoestring. He wanted lavish and decadent and Osteria Francescana, not hostels and street vendors like his frugal husband suggested. Although there is obviously still room in any itinerary for street vendors.

It happens to be on his Fuck-It List too, right around ensuring the longevity of his retail empire. So far they’re thinking late spring, right after Patrick is done with the musical. It is so close David can already taste the stroopwafels.

Patrick spends the rest of breakfast discussing the soil chemistry of his garden, which isn’t even a garden, but a rectangular square of dirt in their backyard that seems to be the current object of a good portion of his affection.

David doesn’t really pretend to understand it; the closest he’s come to horticulture is playing the understudy to the voice of Audrey II in an off-off-Broadway production of _Little Shop of Horrors_ back in his teen modeling days. He was deeply miscast but his mother...well. Is his mother.

To be clear, he loves that Patrick loves a patch of dirt. He loves that Patrick is planning and imagining and inviting people over in what he refers to as “the fallow season” just to admire the perfectly tilled rows. Patrick’s orderliness and fastidiousness and innate desire to tend is meant for gardening, the same way it is meant for David. And the garden is probably a lot more amenable to his tending.

* * *

“Where the hell have you two been? What if there had been some kind of county-wide skin-contact wine emergency?” Stevie greets David and Patrick on the sidewalk outside the store.

“Before noon on a Thursday?” Patrick questions. “What is going on in corporate North America these days?”

They aren’t late. They’ve adjusted their store hours so they open every Thursday at noon. This way it’s easier to schedule appointments without having to feel like they’re running in sixteen different directions, and on non-appointment weeks, it gives them an opportunity for leisurely morning sex (or when David is up for waffle breakfasts or just plain rest). It’s one change that David feels completely at peace with and wishes would have happened sooner.

“Luckily, we have cases and cases of wine so there is no cause for alarm.” David squints at her in the bright midday sun, suspicious. 

“And I am assuming you are actually the one with the wine emergency, and not the county itself?” Patrick asks as he unlocks the side door for all three of them.

“It’s not an emergency so much as a constant yearning, but yes, sure.” 

“Aha,” Patrick says as he flicks on the store lights, revealing its immaculate surfaces and intentionally displayed merchandise. He touches the small of David’s back. “Do you need me to do anything out here before I go fall down this online sales program rabbit hole?”

David glances around the store and sees nothing out of its place. “Nope.”

Patrick lightly guides David toward the stool and kisses his cheek. “I’ll bring you my findings this afternoon and we can go over all the options. Maybe I’ll make a PowerPoint.”

“Ooh so much fun. Can’t wait.” He actually means it. Getting Rose Apothecary’s merchandise online could mean a huge uptick in business and the added bonus of a chance at checking off his _get into Goop_ Fuck-It List item.

Stevie watches Patrick’s back disappear through the curtains before she speaks. “Blink twice if you need me to bring over the good pot tonight.”

“I mean, the answer to that is always yes.” David double-checks yesterday’s display of sugar scrubs and turns back to Stevie. “So how many bottles of wine do you need?”

“I don’t need any since I bought that case last week. I just came to make sure—” she flicks her eyes toward the curtain and lowers her voice slightly. “I just wanted to make sure I didn’t need to save any for _you_. It’s been kind of a crappy week and I want to keep as much for myself as possible.”

“No. Of course not. I’m good. I mean, I will take all the good pot you have, but just. For medicinal purposes. And rainy days. And Mondays. All the days.”

“Good.” Stevie quirks a brow. “So you’re positive you won’t end up on my balcony tonight drinking my wine because some monster in tight jeans took your socks?”

“And my area rugs. And my Ugg boots because they didn’t have enough arch support.” David takes a deep, calming breath. He and Patrick have definitely gotten past the well-intentioned yet slightly misguided effort that was the Great Sock Heist. And anyway, it happened before the regular stretching or his current effective anti-inflammatory medication, when he was so much more uncomfortable, all the time. 

So David isn’t sure how much of their fight to blame on Patrick’s need for control and how much to blame on pain. It’s easier to blame pain, and far more satisfying.

“Look, Patrick had a new stool made for me, and I have no complicated feelings whatsoever.”

She narrows her eyes at him but he doesn’t have to lie. It’s true. Things are good.

Stevie starts to respond but the bell jingles and Robin wanders in looking for produce followed closely by Ronnie on a bleu cheese run. 

David quickly redirects the conversation to Stevie and work and Ruth. The last thing he needs is the entire town worrying about what’s going on with him. 

Besides, they have everything under control.


	2. a train to change your mind

“Did you crowd the steamer?” David demands, without the utmost patience, as he tests a few of the recently steamed bao and finds them significantly more doughy than several of their counterparts. “The recipe says not to crowd the steamer and this batch appears to be afflicted with some type of...bun-spread.” The bao are like tiny subway-riders, slowly encroaching on one another’s space in a bamboo jungle.

Patrick peers into the basket with interest, as if he is about to pontificate on the science of yeast or bamboo cookware. It isn’t as if he hasn’t before. “We could just throw in another batch since we have all that dough still frozen.”

“Okay, well, I’ll call you in two days when it finally unthaws. I’m sure your mom and dad will love pork buns,” David says, turning away from the stove and crossing his arms. Yes, he’s being passive aggressive toward bread products. He isn’t proud.

“I don’t think it’ll quite take two days.” Patrick smooths at David’s tense shoulder before he scans the basket and picks out a few buns that might be up to David’s standards. Holding one up for approval, David shakes him off in a wordless rejection. Patrick frowns but continues, “Actually, they would probably love our pork buns. We don’t have a lot of edgy spins on Asian cuisine in Blind River.”

“Shocking.” David gives Patrick a quizzical look. “Also, ‘edgy spins’? Are you writing for _Food and Wine_ now?”

“Shush. I read an article, okay? I am trying to make glorious kitchen magic with my husband, please don’t judge.”

David smiles and presses a kiss to Patrick’s temple. “Did the article mention how to prevent bun-spread in a small space?”

“Sharp glares and knowing looks. A lot of level gazes. Loudly clearing one’s throat.” He demonstrates a haughty-for-Patrick _ahem._ It’s very cute. 

“So they suggest shaming them into submission.” David just rolls with it, the idea softening the sharper points of his mood.

“Yes, precisely. Shaming is always such an effective baking strategy,” Patrick laughs. It feels good to have made him laugh; the feeling is precious and it sticks in David’s chest, gooey and giddy and warm.

The past two months have been harder again. The flares have been coming more frequently, lasting longer, and without any specific trigger. It doesn’t matter how much he cuts back or rests or stretches, they just happen. The doctor says it’s all normal. The internet says it’s all normal. David does not feel like it’s all normal, but like with most things since he was diagnosed, he’s adjusting. 

_Adjusting_ also applies to the decision to postpone their European holiday, because as the trip got closer, so did the frightening thought David might spend its entirety in one hotel room or another, flaring. Postponing was his idea; the stroopwafels will be there when he’s ready. (It’s taken him several appointments with Sandy to come to this conclusion, but he isn’t sure he’s quite as convinced as she is.)

But today, he feels good. Has now for a few days, like he’s settling back into a good spot. He’s excited the Brewers are coming for Patrick’s birthday and their visit will coincide with an uptick, instead of a flare. 

Patrick kisses his cheek and nuzzles into David’s neck. It’s as if Patrick has been waiting to pop the cork of his affection and now it’s fizzing in every direction. “This is our last night of privacy for a few days, you know.”

“Aren’t you hungry?” David gestures to the food he can tell they’re about to abandon. Between his flares, Patrick’s rehearsal schedule, and the summer series Patrick was running in his absence, they have not had a chance to connect. Plus, Patrick does smell like warm bread, so close enough. 

“Nah,” Patrick denies as he turns off the stove, a hand still settled on the curve of David’s back. “I want you.”

David feels infinitely wanted, from Patrick’s dark gaze to the sweet press of his hands against newly bared skin. 

Upstairs, it isn’t wild, untamed, electricity that spreads through David’s body as Patrick sucks, licks, and teases. It is warmth and care and focus flowing through each of his limbs like a quiet stream. Each kiss and each touch is a gentle exhalation, a sigh of pleasure, that floats through David’s body and pushes him closer and closer to the edge. There is nothing hurried about the lazy waves of uncoiled heat that lap over David as he rides out his orgasm, as he brings Patrick to his own, as he kisses shivers off Patrick’s sweat-slicked skin. 

Before they fall into sex-drunk sleep, Patrick lightly massages David’s hips and back, coaxing him into easy stretches, and it’s so intimate, so precisely worshipful, David feels the need to express his gratitude immediately, and the whole evening seems to shift back to the start.

* * *

“Do you want us to leave you and your lasagna alone, David?” Patrick asks, rubbing David’s arm with fond amusement. David has just taken his third bite and moaned a little too ecstatically for present company. It’s just...so good. “Wait until you have their famous shepherd’s pie. You’re going to love it, but maybe in a more platonic way. Hopefully.”

“All right,” he admonishes and turns to the Brewers at large. “I’m still a little put out that none of you mentioned this birthday shepherd’s pie tradition before I ordered the Chesapeake Bay in crab cakes all those years ago.”

“Well, there is always the option of letting it go,” Patrick reminds him, but before David can state the precise nature of his feelings on _that_ , Clint jumps in.

“Ah. The shepherd’s pie used to be a tradition in my family. Mom made it every Saint Paddy’s Day, and we adapted it for Patrick as a way to get him to eat his vegetables.” Clint gives both David and Patrick a grave look. “We apologize in advance because in order to convince him, we may have had to tell him that _he_ was Saint Patrick.”

“You didn’t!” This does explain...so very much. 

Patrick is already staring down at his butter-laden garlic bread, face a bright cranberry color.

“Sadly yes.” Marcy picks up. “And it turns out the joke was on us because he loved it. He asked for it every night. He would stomp away and refuse to eat if it wasn’t on the table.”

This doesn’t necessarily surprise David, but it does amuse him.

“We couldn’t let the boy starve,” Clint continues, as if this is a well-practiced story with traded beats that they tell at every family dinner. “So after a month straight of shepherd’s pie, we decided to limit it to birthdays and special occasions. Eight-year-old Patrick didn’t really have a concept of the price of ground lamb.”

David takes a moment to marvel at the image of his husband as a child, perfectly willing to believe he was a living saint but unwilling to accept economic justification for why he couldn’t have exactly what he wanted. 

“So—” David isn’t even trying to suppress his smile. It’s going to burst right out of his face like a sunbeam. “—we should be doing more to prepare for St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow. Maybe a parade. Or a festival.”

“Okay, David.”

“We could ask the mayor if he’d turn the creek green in your honor. Oh Patrick, you’d look so cute on a float,” Marcy says, then squeezes Patrick’s hand.

David can’t remember the last time he had this much fun. 

A mischievous glint sparks in his father-in-law’s warm eyes. “I don’t know where we can find a papier-mâché snake at this late date, but David, I know you’re resourceful—”

“Okay, laugh it up everybody, I was eight,” Patrick interrupts. He seems to be, at minimum, two seasonally inappropriate jokes away from a really good pout.

David turns to his husband, knowing exactly how to tow the line without crossing it. “I mean, did you think you’d get away with it? I know about your security blanket, I know about your nightlight. I know about your diary, for god sake.”

“Oh honey, remember ‘From the Mind and Heart of Patrick E. Brewer,’ with its lock and the ‘keep out’ sticker and how he’d hide it under his gym socks—” Marcy sounds downright wistful but Patrick cuts her off with what passes for his version of a glare. 

“I’m sorry but I thought I might be able to take my juvenile sainthood to the grave. Or maybe accidentally get canonized through some kind of cosmic loophole and it wouldn’t be an issue.” Patrick wears a terribly caught out expression and it’s adorable. “I didn’t think it would ever come up!”

“I mean, son, you had to figure we’d spill the beans at some point. It is just too good of a story.”

“The jig is up, honey!” David announces as Patrick seems to be deciding whether to lean into mortification or fight his way out.

If David didn’t find shamrocks and kelly green so unappealing, he would absolutely be revising his plan for tomorrow’s decorations. But he has too many LED candles boxed up in the garage to change course now.

“Well, thanks everyone, I hope you’re happy, because this is definitely going in my diary!”

Clint covers his mouth with his hand, Marcy snorts with laughter, and David considers rescuing Patrick for the briefest of seconds, until they’re all four guffawing and breathless and slapping the table in hysterics.

* * *

Patrick’s parents used to wake him up every birthday with a song, a cake, and several hand-selected gifts, but on his thirty-sixth birthday, David wakes him at three a.m. by accidentally knocking over a glass of water and cursing loudly.

“I’m sorry!” David shouts, because apparently he has forgotten how to modulate his volume.

Which is sometimes known to happen in the face of deep, soul-crushing, excruciating pain. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Patrick is sitting up now, slowly regaining his wits after turning on the bedside lamp. “What can I do?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m not going to do nothing, David,” Patrick says, shifting so that he can get out of bed. His hair is pushed to a full stand on one side and there are pillow creases on his cheek. He looks twelve. “Heating pad? Ice? Shower? Massage?”

David shakes his head. “The good stuff and sleep.”

Patrick’s shoulders are at his ears and David doesn’t think it’s from repositioning himself on the mattress. “Okay. I’ll go get you more water.”

He doesn’t argue even though he’s in enough pain he would willingly dry-swallow his medication at this point. “Happy—” 

“—here you go.” Patrick is back in a flash. Unless David zoned out for a second. “Hey.”

Yeah, he zoned out. “But it’s your birthday.”

“Hmm.” He taps David’s hand that is clutching his medication to indicate it’s time to put it on his tongue. Despite repeated self-direction, gravity and his muddled brain are still not on his side. Patrick nudges David again, gentle. “Your pills.”

“Okay.” David doesn’t move. Somehow the medicine gets to his mouth, because he can feel it on his tongue. He hasn’t been this out of it in a while. Like everything is muzzy and nothing connects. 

Patrick holds the glass of water to David’s lips and waits for him to swallow.

He sleeps most of the morning, in and out, and when he’s tugged into consciousness, Patrick’s concerned face flickers in front of him, like a television set with poor reception.

When David does finally wake, his spine feels less like it is being dug out with a serrated spoon and more like a low, constant throb in every joint and limb. He stretches for what feels like an hour, flexing fingers and toes and everything in between, just to know he still can. He feels no less rusted over or stiff by the time he finally hauls himself out of bed, but he manages to text the Brewers about modifying Patrick’s birthday plans and set up a few things around the room that they can hopefully get to later.

He’s exhausted from completing that small bit of business so he shuffles back to bed, taking another dose of painkillers and breathing his way to a tentative, edge of consciousness kind of rest.

As he drifts, he can hear Patrick’s voice, low and steady and clear, constant. He’s probably dreaming it, but the meds are strong and if he dreams, they’re vivid but elusive. This is different. It’s soothing.

It is dusk when David finally blinks awake, joints dully aching. 

Next to him, Patrick is sitting on the bed in his sweatpants, a book in his hand. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

David shakes his head. He’s still foggy, but he misses Patrick.

“Is it too late for cake?”

Smiling, Patrick runs a hand through David’s hair. God, how it must look. “A wise man once told me that is never too late for cake. Once you eat some leftover shepherd’s pie as a base, of course.”

“I don’t remember saying the thing about—fuck.” David groans as his stomach seizes with guilt. “I was supposed to make your birthday dinner. Your dad was going to teach me.”

“Hey, it still got made. Next year, okay?” Patrick stores his book on the nightstand and crawls carefully across their bed to go heat the leftovers, kissing David lightly as he goes. 

By the time Patrick returns, David has done his best to brush his teeth and turn on as many LED tea lights as he can locate and place nearby. Candles from the store line the nightstands and fill the air with cedar and vetiver. “Surprise?”

Patrick’s answering grin is as dazzling as any sunrise. “David, what did you do?”

“I had a Plan B.” And a Plan C and a Plan D, because David didn’t trust for a second that today would go off without a hitch. That isn’t his luck with the universe and party planning. “I picked these up yesterday at the hardware store and hid them in the nightstand. Did you know they sell more than just hammers?”

“I had an inkling, yes.”

David straightens his sleep shirt as primly as possible. “A wild and horrifying place I hope never to return.” 

“Well they definitely don’t have any LED candles left in stock so what’s the point?” Patrick says lightly before scanning the room again, looking dazed. “This is...thank you, David.”

“Sadly you had to bring your own cake which is just abhorrent hosting, and the slow-dancing portion of the evening has been cancelled, thanks to the poor sportsmanship of chronic pain.”

“Really? Because that’s kind of what we do, David. Something doesn’t go as planned, you make it okay, and then eventually, we dance.”

“You have just described far too much of our relationship in a nutshell.”

“It’s a really good nutshell.” Patrick is glowing and it isn’t just the firelight. He’s beautiful; David wants him to have everything. 

“Go get the desk chair from your office.” He hears the snap and wants to soften it. “Please.”

Patrick gives David a mock salute, which he mostly deserves, and leaves. Within moments, he wheels in his IKEA-made desk chair. It really does not fit the warm white tones David has painstakingly crafted in their master bedroom, but...trying times and all. 

“Please sit.” David aims for a more sultry, come hither tone and Patrick, once again, does as he is asked. Patrick obediently following directives is a little like observing a comet—rare and traditionally over in the time it takes to blink.

Grabbing his phone to supply the soundtrack, David arranges himself carefully on Patrick’s lap and wraps his arms around Patrick’s shoulders, faces so close their breath intermingles.

“David,” Patrick whispers. It’s clear he realizes what David intends and it reads on his face like David’s favorite lines in a beloved poem. His grip tightens. “Are you about to make another birthday perfect?”

“I think that may be overselling it, but I’m trying.”

Patrick blinks at him, caught in that liminal space affording David a front row seat to a virtual cataclysm of emotions. Eyes aren’t just the window to the soul, David thinks. They’re the window to Patrick’s entire world. A cosmos, maybe. 

When he speaks, Patrick’s voice is rough, as though coated in fiberglass. “Yeah, I think you’re closer than you realize.”

“Good.”

Otis Redding reminds them there is so much to love as they glide slowly around the hardwood floors of their bedroom. For once, it’s nice that Patrick absconded with the rugs relabeled as tripping hazards, because tonight they would have become dancing obstructions.

“You could let me lead, you know,” David complains as one of Patrick’s socked feet tangles between the wheels of the chair and the foot David still has on the ground, bumping them to an abrupt halt. Of course, Patrick doesn’t allow him to fall.

“Excuse me, I’ve been told I’m working with tree trunks here and I’m doing the best I can.”

As the horn section fades out, Patrick gives David one last, lingering kiss that travels a solid line down every nerve ending in his body. After a hard day, he wants to hold on to this warm, fortifying sensation. He hopes Patrick is holding onto it too.

Dinner is cold again but the cake is delicious at any temperature, so they share two generous slices before folding themselves together on David’s side of the bed. At this point, he isn’t sure where Patrick begins and he ends, which is nice after a day lost to fuzzy, half-memories.

“Did you know that if you’re orbiting the Earth from space, the sun rises sixteen times a day?”

Luckily David is now used to husbandly non-sequiturs, especially after Patrick has been reading.

“That seems excessive,” David complains into the faded fabric of Patrick’s oft-washed t-shirt. Marcy must have done laundry already. It smells different, like she brought her own lavender fabric softener, or, god, went to the store. “Did you learn that in your book?”

“Hmm.” Patrick tugs at David’s chin, rubbing a circle into the wiry beard growth with his thumb, before tilting David’s gaze up to meet his. “It’s kind of...I don’t know. It reminds me of you, I guess. Or how I think of you. Doing things like this for me even when you could be taking care of yourself.”

David swallows, a lump forming in his throat. He wants to do whatever he can for Patrick. He wants to make him sainted meals and birthday cakes and what Otis Redding was saying about being the breeze after the storm is gone. His energy may be more limited now, but he can still harness it for the people he loves. He can still do things for Patrick, even if his options are no longer exactly the same. “It was nothing.”

“It was not nothing.” Patrick kisses the crest of his forehead. “Thank you for choosing me, David.”

* * *

It’s 4:30 a.m. and David has traded shifting uncomfortably in bed for lying on the sofa with a heating pad so he can allow Patrick some rest before he has to open the store. 

He’s the kind of tired that borders on delirious, but the plague of needles in his joints refuses to abate. His muscles clench involuntarily when he hears thumping on the stairs, but relax when he recognizes the compact shadow. 

Patrick’s hair is wild and unkempt and he’s wearing his robe because having his parents in their house makes him layer on clothing like armor for a reason David has yet to parse. He also looks soft and unassuming and so comfortable it feels like an attack.

“I thought I lost you,” Patrick whispers through a yawn as he hones in on David reclined in the near dark. “Can I help?”

David shakes his head. He wonders if Patrick will continue to ask that question if he never takes the help he offers, but the reality is that very little does help, especially during a flare. The only way out is through. “No, but you can sit with me.”

Patrick needs to be needed; it’s written in the marrow of his bones like a codex that can be unlocked only through feeling useful. He places himself on the edge of the sofa cushion where he can drape himself over David in careful, well-placed increments, finally pressing his nose into David’s neck. “We can play How It’s Made.”

It’s a game that Patrick used to corral Clint into playing when he had trouble sleeping as a kid, which David has only recently learned about. David has to admit that just the mental image of a tiny and precocious Patrick, even anxious and looking for comfort, makes him feel less alone. And adult Patrick, still anxious and still looking for comfort, wants to provide that for him. “Okay, do a chair.”

Patrick scratches his blunt nails at the back of David’s hairline. “Long version or short?”

“Your version.”

“Well, it won’t be the most accurate, but okay.” 

“I mean, I feel like Jake really gave an in-depth explanation of the process to you when he brought over the new kitchen stools, so it’s probably a tiny bit accurate.”

“Hmm, I don’t think ‘imitating the curve of my ass’ is a classic woodworking method.”

David gives the ass in question a squeeze. “It should be.”

Patrick’s embarrassed chuckle is warm against David’s throat. “I just don’t want to be in all the textbooks with a black bar over my face.”

“Bold of you to assume there are textbooks.”

“Yes, Jake has repeatedly told me he goes by feel.” 

At that, they burst into giggles, slaphappy and overtired laughter that turns gasping and silent as their shoulders shake and tears roll out of their eyes.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, we’re going to wake up the whole house.” Patrick turns very proper then, a difficult feat to accomplish with his hair going every which way and his own hands cupping David’s ass. “Shhh.”

David kisses the bolt of Patrick’s jaw as an apology. “Yes, yes, I’m thoroughly shushed. Now get on with it or I’ll have to call Jake myself.”

“Okay.” Patrick clears his throat and adjusts himself so that he can reposition the heating pad at David’s hip. “Okay, let me tell you about the lifespan of a chair, Patrick Brewer-style.”

And he does. From the planting of the tree to the final coat of polyurethane and a meandering work of complete fiction in between, Patrick strokes at the small of David’s back and murmurs his explanation into his hair. It isn’t long before David feels his blinking become labored and slow, covered in the warmth of his husband's empathy and care. When David wakes up a few hours later, he’s surrounded by the smell of fresh coffee and the soft navy fleece of Patrick’s now empty robe.

“Morning, sunshine,” Clint announces chipperly from the eat-in kitchen as David struggles to sit up. He realizes it’s been more than twenty-four hours since he’s seen him. “Patrick is already at work but he left us very explicit instructions about what we are and are not allowed to touch. Marcy’s out in the garden but she made some eggs if you’re interested. Or I can get you some cereal?”

“No, I’m—“ he slips his arms into the sleeves of the robe, pulling it more tightly around him like it’s still Patrick’s arms. Patrick’s scent—citrusy and clean and deeply soothing—lingers on the collar where he’s bunching it toward his face. “I’ll go back upstairs and get out of your way.”

It would be nice if he could have done some stretching in place because he’s still feeling like the unoiled version of the Tin Man but instead of self-consciously demonstrating his routine to his father-in-law, he shuffles slowly upstairs. 

The bed is made and _Bridget Jones’ Diary_ waits for him on his pillow but David doesn’t want to crawl in. 

Since the weather has gotten warm again, Patrick opens their bedroom window under the guise that fresh air is helpful and healthy, even though the farm across the street has other ideas about air quality most days. David is about to pull it shut when he realizes it isn’t some television program he’s listening to, but his in-laws conversing in his own backyard.

In the center of Patrick’s...dirt box—the one that was never planted because AS seemed to have other plans—Marcy sits on a square rubber pad, surrounded by various gardening supplies. Clint is standing behind the lawnmower that Patrick may love almost as much as his precious dirt box, if the besotted look on his face when he brought it home from the hardware store was any indication. 

Feeling like he’s recreating six different Jane Austen novel plot lines by standing at his bedroom window eavesdropping, it isn’t David’s fault if he can hear snatches of their conversation completely clearly.

“Should you take another couple days off, do you think?” Marcy asks Clint, shielding her eyes from the morning sun.

From above, it appears his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. “I can, if you think we won’t be in the way. Patrick seems…” the word gets eaten by a passing car and David bemoans the intrusion. “I’m worried about him, Marce.”

“I should have known when he suggested we stay home that he was getting—”

“Overwhelmed,” Clint finishes for his wife and although David knew he wasn’t going to like how the sentence ended, he also wasn’t quite braced well enough for that.

Marcy responds, but she speaks too softly to catch all of her words. David thinks he hears _anxious_ and _sleep_ and _medication._

There’s a brief lull as Marcy pulls some weeds and David is about to step away when she speaks again.

“Honey, don’t you remember his third year at university when he ended up with that mouth guard because he was having migraines from grinding his teeth every night?” Clint gives her a response that is garbled by wind. 

Clint fiddles with something on the mower handle, so Marcy must have struck a nerve. Patrick fiddles when he’s caught, too. 

“Let’s talk to Pat before we jump to too many conclusions,” he says, drowning out any further communication with the whir of the motor. 

The abrupt end to the conversation forces David to have to sink back into the moors, or no, that was the Brontes with the moors, not Jane Austen, so he’s stuck wishing he crawled into bed with Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy when he had the chance.

But David can’t stop turning their worries over in his head as he showers and does a protracted version of his skincare. He stews about it for as long as he can, wondering what else he may have missed, but he’s gotten his routine down to five steps now and he wants to get outside and actually _do_ something about it.

Dressing as quickly as his body will allow, David pulls on soft joggers and his coziest Neil Barrett, then finds Marcy still crouched over a pile of soil outside. 

David startles her when he offers her the glass of lemonade he brought out for her to drink. It’s already getting warm outside; the sun feels restorative where it heats the back of his neck.

“Oh no sweetheart, I’m fine. I should be asking you what you’d like for lunch soon, actually. You shouldn’t be waiting on me.”

“You’re a guest in our home and we’re forcing you to forage in mud. It’s the least I can do, especially since there aren’t any truffles at the end of that dig.”

She accepts the glass then and takes a few polite sips. “We can go for a walk if you’d like; I know this garden isn’t really your cup of tea.”

David knows that his in-laws were left detailed instructions, typed and laminated probably, one of which was definitely _get David moving; he doesn’t like it but he feels better when he moves._ It’s still strange to hear it happen and know exactly what’s behind it.

“I think I’d rather you show me what’s happening here, so I can shock Patrick with my sudden wealth of knowledge.”

Marcy gives him a sidelong look, hesitating before finally agreeing. “Of course, sweetheart.”

He points to the packets of seeds Marcy has brought out with her. He’d ask if there are any Kirby cucumbers like his recipe calls for but he doesn’t want her to try to enroll him in the graduate-level gardening lessons for knowing that...brand. Or model. Okay, he should be demoted back down to the beginner-level courses. “Are there any cucumbers in there?”

“Oh, those would be an excellent addition to the carrots. Too late for peas I think, if you were after those too.” She sounds like she’s teasing. Maybe it’s a gardening joke, or just the natural cadence of the Brewer family, taking nothing too seriously until they absolutely do.

David isn’t sure how it happens—some sort of nurturing parent hypnotism, maybe—but before long, he too is on his hands and knees, canoodling with mud. Okay, soil. Still. 

The weirdest part is, it feels good. It feels like dirt, yes, but it also feels...peaceful. It’s not intuitive to him by any means but it reminds him of what it used to feel like when he painted or sketched. The repetitive motion and the focus involved takes him out of his own head and he can almost feel his heart rate slow, syncing with the easy rhythm of dig, plant, pat, dig, plant, pat. 

David sits back on his haunches, quite possibly smearing a swath of dirt onto his face in an attempt to chase a bead of sweat. “There has to be a cleaner way to do this.”

Clint looks up from the area of grass he’s raking nearby and teases, “He’s gardened for an hour and already he wants to branch out into hydroponics.”

“Okay, Clint, why don’t you make yourself useful and do something with those lawn clippings. Or even better, there was some work inside I thought might be good for you.” She dismisses her husband with a waved hand. David forgets that Marcy is a quiet enforcer, like a mob boss in gardening Crocs and an apron. “Well, for what Patrick has set up, you have to be down in it. At home, we have a big community garden with raised beds for people who don’t...want to kneel in the dirt.”

“Well, that does sound like the superior situation,” David acknowledges and suppresses the desire to ask what kind of person _does_ want to kneel in the dirt, especially since he’s talking to one of them presently.

As if she can read his mind, or maybe just his facial expression, Marcy responds, “Oh no, I don’t like it either. Kneeling is the absolute pits for my knees.”

David offers her his hand to help them both stand. “Then what are we doing down here?”

As they brush dirt and probably several new and frightening species of insects from their clothing, his mother-in-law flashes him a smile he’s seen almost every day for six years, but on another person's face. “I think we were both down there for the same reason, David.”

David has become far more accustomed to displays of affection but outright acknowledgement of them remains difficult, at best. He thinks he might eke out an affirmative noise in response, but it’s the best he can do on short notice.

For lunch, they eat out on the patio, munching Clint’s famous grilled ham and cheese sandwiches with crisp dill pickles Marcy brought from the canning she’s done in her own garden. David finds himself tilting into the sunlight like one of the plants they spent the morning nurturing to grow, wishing he could acquire the skills of photosynthesis and convert the suns’ rays into energy too.

He can’t though, not yet anyway, and excuses himself to go nap. He’s up in time for Patrick to arrive home from work and find him ecstatic over the improved state of his garden. When Patrick sees the growing pile of invoices on the dining room table has been eradicated, he throws his arms around both his parents. 

“Well, David took up my yard work mantle, so I had to put my degree to work. I have to say, I really enjoyed it,” Clint tells him.

Patrick’s eyebrow twitches and his voice goes a little high. “David did what?”

“Shh,” David moves into Patrick’s space as the Brewers excuse themselves to the kitchen to finish making dinner, leaving David and Patrick alone on the three-seasons porch. “Exercise helps.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Okay, it’s less fun when you just agree with me.” David leans in to kiss the corner of Patrick’s downturned mouth and rests his hand between his shoulder blades. “We had a good day together, though.”

“It looks like it.” Patrick is still quiet. Spring sunlight slants in through the window and gives Patrick an artificial glint in his eye. He looks exhausted and David can’t believe it’s taken him this long to notice. 

“Have they already talked to you about staying a few extra days?”

Patrick nods. “I told them I have to talk to you first. It’s totally up to you.”

David thinks about the state of the house, about Patrick working open to close everyday alone, about the shepherd’s pie he should be able to make any day, not just on special occasions. He looks over at Patrick, barely able to keep his eyes open at 6 p.m. because he’s been up since 4 a.m.

David can’t say no. 

“Tell them I’d love it if they did.”

“Okay.” Patrick runs his fingers over the vein in David’s hand, leans his head on David’s shoulder. Behind them in the kitchen, another dinner is being made. “So you gardened?” His voice does that incredulous thing again.

“The student is becoming the master.” David curls up closer, changing the subject before Patrick asks him what he mastered, exactly. He’s better at demonstrating it, maybe. “Anything happen today at the store?”

“Ah, Bob stopped by, wanting to hang out. Did you know he has a heavy bag in his garage? He said Gwen asked him to put it up so she could work out her aggression. There’s a story there, and I gotta say, I was actually curious to hear it.”

“Do not fall into his trap. No Gwen story is shorter than three hours or four crying jags, whichever comes first.”

“He’s lonely.”

“Are you...lonely?” Before today, David had been asleep for a day and a half. Pain still claws at his hips and his shoulders. He doesn’t want Patrick just sitting around waiting for him to wake up, but he wants him to have more options than Bob.

“I am not lonely.” Patrick gives David a kiss. “So how are you? On a scale of one to Gwen?”

“Ugh, like a five.” It was definitely at Gwen before. “Do you think Bob also rates his pain on a scale of one to Gwen?”

“Who doesn’t?” Patrick shrugs. “But seriously, I thought you’d be having a chocolate and duvet day today.”

That’s how they’ve started classifying what Gwen days would have led to: wrapping himself in their duvet with _The Devil Wears Prada_ and a box of bespoke chocolates. (David has never been so happy as the day he read chocolate has scientifically-proven health-bolstering powers related to chronic pain conditions. He’s taking his victories where he can find them.) Chocolate and duvet days are also code for “you should be resting,” which David is still struggling to hear.

“I’m good,” he tells Patrick, meaning it. “Now let’s go ask your mom and dad to stay.”

* * *

In total, the Brewers spend another seven days visiting. Laundering. Cooking. Gardening. Caretaking. 

By the third day, Patrick is singing again in the shower. Loudly. By the seventh, he’s lighter and more energetic. Quicker to joke, quicker to smile, quicker to drop his shoulders and relax on the sofa, strumming his guitar. When he says goodbye to his parents, there are tears in his eyes, and David knows it’s about more than just missing them. It’s about needing them. 

“I think we need to think about telling people,” David announces to Patrick over the fresh serving of shepherd’s pie he learned to make after a crash course with Clint. 

“About the AS?” 

David nods. “Yes. I think...if we have some backup plans for tough days, that might help.”

It is Patrick’s turn to nod. It’s clear he’s turning something over in his head. “Okay.” He swallows. “What kind of backup plans?”

“Well,” David has spent a week thinking about this, but in all the scenarios he’s run, he has never quite determined the best course of action here. The best place to start. He knows Patrick on a cellular, almost molecular level now, can measure his happiness in soft hums and brittle smiles, but he knows Patrick’s pride isn’t always where reason and logic shines. “Part-time help at the store.”

“Okay. That’s...fiscally, I’ll need to—it’s something to look at, for sure.” Patrick stabs at a carrot but doesn’t take a bite. “If we tell people, they’ll know.”

David looks around the room as if he can make eye contact with someone else and commiserate about the obviousness. “I mean, yes. That would be a byproduct.”

“It’s just...you weren’t comfortable telling people before. Has that changed?” Patrick asks. 

“Yes, it’s changed.” David reaches to still the knee that is suddenly bobbing next to his chair. “If people know, they’ll understand why we can’t say yes to every single thing, why I’m not at the store some days. They’ll help you.”

“They’ll help me?”

“They’ll help us both. Patrick, we can’t do this by ourselves.”

David knows that Patrick would have run back and forth spinning plates for as long as he could, because Patrick is fueled by feeling useful. That he conflates being busy with being happy. That they’re lucky his birthday fell when it did, and they both got this wake-up. Because he would break himself trying.

Patrick abandons his fork on the side of his plate. “It might...I have been looking at our finances and a few part-timers could be in the budget. But there’s training and orientation and we’re going to have to update the binders—”

“I love updating binders. I can do that from anywhere,” David reminds him.

Patrick breathes out a little sharply. “Yeah, yeah, of course. That would be great. And you can maybe include a few moodboards and flow charts for help with display decisions—”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I will continue to manage all the creative aspects of our store.” David holds up a warning finger and Patrick’s expression melts into something less anxious and stricken at the sheer familiarity of it, maybe. “I feel like we’ve been concentrating a little too much on me and not quite enough on you.”

“That’s not...no. I’m fine.” Patrick worries his bottom lip between his teeth. “David, I’m fine,” he insists. “I like doing it. You don’t have to give up what matters to you so we can hire a couple of kids.”

“No, I want—this is what I want.” David rubs at Patrick’s arm, scooting himself closer in his chair, until he finally just gives up and scoops Patrick into his arms. The thought of telling people leaves him prone, but he is willing to trade this last morsel of control for a chance to relieve Patrick. 

Patrick allows himself to be held, burying his face in the crook of David’s neck. “You shouldn’t have to make this choice because I couldn’t keep up. That isn’t fair to you,” he says, murmuring a litany of apologies into David’s skin, his arms tight around David’s back. “I’m sorry, David. I am so sorry.”

It dawns on David just then that this is the first time in his life anyone has ever apologized for the fierceness of their love for him. “Hey, you’re taking amazing care of me and the house and the store. Now let’s even it out.”

That night, as they’re tucking themselves into bed, if David happens to ensure Patrick’s mouthguard makes its way from the drawer into the cradle of its owner’s jaw, well. He’ll admit it proudly.

* * *

Once David and Patrick put the classified ad in the paper looking for part-time help, the whole town starts to ask questions and slowly, the news of David’s diagnosis spreads.

It’s fine for a while, mostly because people bring them food and...offerings? Comfort items, maybe. David doesn’t know what to call them, but for a stretch of time, almost every day, someone presses a homemade casserole into David’s hands or presents Patrick with a book or a set of DVDs or a word jumble. It’s sweet and well-meaning and the shine wears off after about two weeks, two resumes from Ray highlighting his various sales qualifications, five crossword puzzle books, and fifteen ready-to-heat Sloppy Jocelyns.

David is back to working his modified schedule and now, with the addition of their part-time employees, Patrick is too. 

On David’s half-day, the bell on the door rings, signaling not their new-hire Josie, who should be here any minute to relieve him, but Jocelyn. She slides a weathered-looking, medium-sized cardboard box onto the counter next to the register. David regards it with the same suspicion he would if it were a bomb, a baby, or Roland. 

“Hi, so, funny story, but we sell _you_ things here. We aren’t doing ‘bring your own box’, actually.” He pokes at the corner nearest him, hoping nothing in it...leaks. Or breathes. “Is there something I should be putting in it, or taking out, or—” _throwing away?_ David knows his patience isn’t top notch lately. Hell, it probably isn’t even bottom rung. It’s a touch below that, maybe.

Jocelyn laughs. “Oh David, glad your sense of humor is still...your sense of humor.” 

David makes what he hopes is a quiet, displeased noise under his breath and clasps his hands together a little more tightly. “Mmm.”

“No, silly, ever since we heard about what’s—” she waves a hand in the air. That has been happening a lot lately, where people want to talk to him about the AS but don’t want to use the words or define it specifically. He still wishes it wasn’t public domain, but he knows things will be better if people know. He isn’t ashamed. He just doesn’t want to have conversations like this everyday. “Anyway, there are a couple of us who drive to Elm Valley for the pool and we have a yoga group that means on Saturday—”

“A couple of us _who?”_

“Oh sure, well.” Jocelyn shifts her weight from foot to foot and her smile fades into the human equivalent of the yikes emoji. “A couple of us with chronic pain. Ronnie has back issues; Robin has migraines. And it turns out a late in life pregnancy causes both pain of the existential variety and a chronic case of sciatica.”

“And to be in this group, I should carry this box? Is it some kind of hazing ritual?”

Jocelyn pats the top lovingly, like an old friend. Oh god, what if there’s an animal in there? Or a silk-screened cat sweater in David’s size? “No, you can just join us if you’d like, since it’s nice to have exercise buddies and whatnot.” David cannot guarantee a single thing his face is doing right now. It is probably aghast. “But this little beauty here is actually chock full of art supplies!”

Okay, now he’s sure his face is responding as if she announced the box was chock full of cholera.

“Oh!” 

“I mean, I don’t know exactly what you’re going through, but I know having something to do with my hands helps me a lot, and I started making these…” She trails off, fishing her phone out of her purse and poking at the screen until she holds up a photo of a rudimentary oil painting of a sleeping baby in a pot, dressed like a plant. She scrolls to another photo collage, where Roland seems to have been the subject of some sort of Demi Moore-esque body painting situation.

David’s inner gallerist withers inside and his physical body recoils in horror. “Well that is definitely...something. But I’m glad it helps.”

“It does!” She says brightly. “I collected some of my old supplies and dropped in some fresh paints and some other little things and now they’re all yours!” She pushes the box closer to him on the counter and he steps back involuntarily. “Enjoy! And David,” she smiles conspiratorially. “Have a rosy day!”

“We still aren’t—um. Yes. Thank you. Very much. For thinking of me.”

Once she’s safely outside, David shoves the box into the back room in the hopes it gets lost among overstock. There hasn’t been a single person in town who hasn’t attempted to make some kind of recommendation to David about what might help his pain: diet, vitamins, exercise, biofeedback, meditation, crystals, and now art. He is still figuring out whether anything actually _works._

Like most of the other suggestions, he doesn’t think of the box again until it ends up on his kitchen counter a week later.

“Oh my god, this thing followed me home! Is it cursed?” It’s definitely cursed. Oh and his name is written on it in bubble letters, a detail he failed to notice the first time. 

Patrick looks up from his place at the kitchen table where he’s doing something mathy with work he’s brought home from the store. Fine, David knows exactly what he’s doing, but admitting it means he would have to help. “Oh drat, yet another cursed object,” he groans.

“Please stuff your sarcasm in a sack.” David circles the box again, wary. “Jocelyn wants me to go swimming with her.”

Patrick’s eyebrows jump. “I feel like I might be missing the thread here, David.”

So David explains and Patrick goes all heart-eyes at the idea of _exercise_ _buddies_ because that is exactly the kind of thing he would be into. David immediately wishes he could walk back out the door and start the conversation again, but this time with far more biting adjectives. Lead with the cholera maybe.

“Well that was awfully sweet of her, though,” Patrick says when David finally finishes the story. “Think of all the dogs playing poker you can finally paint.”

“Really? That’s where you take this mental image?”

“Elvis! Velveteen clowns? Those cozy cottages with the wildflowers? Dolphins!”

“Ew. You’re making my skin crawl.”

“Of all those things, it’s dolphins making your skin crawl? What did they ever do to you?” Patrick swallows back a grin. 

“Nothing yet,” David responds darkly.

“Makes sense.”

David pushes the box back with the tip of one finger, still unsure that cholera isn’t actually included in the blatant terror of Jocelyn creating, well, anything. He’s seen the silk-screened sweatshirts and now, the Roland triptychs. He’s fine never seeing another piece of alleged art again. Patrick is looking at him expectantly and David finds himself searching for a bright side. What is marriage doing to him? 

“This helpful tip is at least...within the vicinity of something I would theoretically do on my own.”

“Okay.” Patrick starts to put his padfolio and calculator away. “Well, vicinity means it’s worth hanging onto, so I’ll put the supplies in the closet upstairs instead of the garbage.”

“Where are you going?”

“It’s Wednesday. Remember, we talked about me checking out that garden club?”

Ah, yes. From the looks of the early 2000s-era website that Patrick showed him last week, the Elm County Garden Club appears to be mainly senior citizens touring local greenery and trading hot gardening tips, the likes of which David has little interest in absorbing. But if it makes Patrick happy, it makes David happy. 

David catches Patrick in his arms before he can grab his wallet and keys to head for the door. “Why do I feel like you’re going off to an underground fight club?”

“First rule of garden club, David, is don’t tell your husband about the fight club. Although I did hear things can get pretty wild and the snacks are fantastic,” he says, giving David one last kiss. “Go check the bedside table. Twyla dropped something off for you.”

Once upstairs, after puttering around with the mail and folding a load of laundry, David finds a basket of handmade black, white, and gray nubby wool socks sitting on his nightstand. The bottom of each sock is covered with rubber grips, not attractive but practical. Looking more closely, David finds a black and white pair with a lightning bolt stitched into the leg, another with a hollow white heart, a stark black pair surrounded in stars, a dark gray pair adorned with _love me tender_ ; each and every pair corresponding in some way to one of his sweaters, or some piece in his vast wardrobe.

There is a note attached in Twyla’s squared-off writing. 

_After my cousin led that prison break, our knitting circle ran out of custom orders. :( Luckily, we heard you were in the market for some new socks and got super excited! (P.S. We hear these are great for hiding contraband!) We loved going through the pictures Patrick sent us of your closet and we hope you like them!!!!_

He hates that he needs them but…he loves them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fic title Some Days are Diamonds is from the excellent Tom Petty song, Walls. 
> 
> The song David and Patrick dance to is "That's How Strong My Love Is" by Otis Redding.
> 
> The chapter title is from "Maybe This Time" written by Jason Isbell and performed by Bradley Cooper.
> 
> As always, without the guidance of Distractivate and vivianblakesunrisebay, this does not exist.


	3. some days are rocks

On their fourth wedding anniversary, Patrick surprises David with pork buns that he made himself, from scratch. Based on context, it’s supposed to be a nice, planned well-in-advance surprise, not a _you seemed like you might not be up for the Elmdale Inn_ surprise. 

Standing next to an enormous gift-wrapped box at the center of the dining room, bathed in soft light, is Patrick wearing his dinner jacket with product in his hair. So it’s overwhelming when David isn’t filled with immediate joy and gratitude.

“You made them yourself? Without me?” David holds the back of his chair as if it is what is keeping him aloft. He feels good today. He could have helped.

“I know we have differing definitions of surprises sometimes, but David, I feel like you making our dinner would have altered the spirit of what I was trying to accomplish.”

It’s their anniversary. Patrick is trying. There are calla lilies in a vase. David feels like his ribs are squeezing closed.

“Yes, you’re right. This is lovely.” Sometimes he feels like lovely is a word he uses when he can’t find something constructive to say, even though objectively, everything is absolutely lovely. “Are we still watching the wedding video?”

They watch their wedding video every anniversary. Last year, they were in New York, right before the AS really started flaring in earnest, when he thought his knees were swollen from walking around the city and eating too much salty food. They spent the night in their Airbnb, bags of frozen peas balanced on David’s legs, watching the town collectively sob as they exchanged their vows. 

“I’ve already got it queued up for after dinner. Which you’ll want to sit down to eat.” Patrick tilts his head at the chair David is still standing behind. “Is everything okay?”

David swallows and nods, finally pulling out his chair and sitting. “Everything is lovely.”

The pork buns are good. Patrick is good at following recipes because he is intentional and never takes shortcuts. He’s perfect for the precision work that is baking, so his bao turn out fluffy and light. The pork belly is sweet and tender, although the hoisin may have been applied with a bit of an overenthusiastic hand. Several attempts have proven that David couldn’t have done it better himself.

They finish dinner and he unwraps the box, which turns out to be the softest blanket David has ever touched, luxurious and perfectly suited to his taste. It’s going to be the star of his reading nest. Patrick’s gift, given to him in the morning, was the replacement of all of his value pack socks and white t-shirts with more worthy organic cotton versions, and a Tom Ford jacket David found on Grailed that made Patrick look like he’d fallen off a runway. 

Curled up in front of the wedding video afterward, David cries when the Jazzagals sing the first notes of _Precious Love_ , when Patrick tells him he’ll climb a thousand mountains, and when he realizes, looking at AS with the long lens, that not only are they climbing, but Patrick may have to carry him.

* * *

Over the next few days, David’s mood doesn’t improve. His good days are precious, and his anniversary should have been one. Why doesn’t it feel like it?

David plucks a black baseball cap embroidered with the Rose Apothecary logo off of a display and holds it between his index finger and thumb as if it is currently aflame. “This is a...are we sponsoring the baseball team now?” 

“No, but that is a great idea!” Patrick responds, returning the offending hat to the stand next to matching t-shirts and...

“Does this say ‘sports balm’? What the fuck is sports balm?”

“Well, it’s organic, for one thing.” 

“But why does sports need a balm?”

“Oh, it’s for the players’ aches and pains.”

“And it’s here because…”

“Because there was a call for it in the marketplace, mostly. I was just thinking that we have enough people in town playing baseball to field _more_ than one team and Brebners doesn’t carry an effective muscle ointment, as we’ve learned.” Patrick gives David a pointed look. If he wants to be persnickety, the word ‘ointment’ is also incorrect. “I talked to Xander about doing a little display as a test run and it just flew off the shelves. So I placed a more permanent order.”

“But we didn’t discuss it.”

Patrick pinches the bridge of his nose and answers without looking at David. “No. I had to move fast because Xander was filling orders for the sporting goods store in Elm Glen too and you were…” Patrick waves his hand in what has become code for _unavailable._

“So these aren’t even exclusive to us?” 

“I mean, no. But who wants to drive to Elm Glen when you can get it right here? We’re minutes from the baseball diamond.”

“So we’ll have troupes of people in tap shoes just tromping over our beautifully refurbished hardwood on match days then.”

“I hope so?” Patrick holds a hand out to stop David from walking into the backroom. “Okay, before you go in there, there is something else I have to tell you.”

“You didn’t.” He is picturing rows and rows of plungers and toilet brushes, as far as the eye can see. 

“You’re imagining plumbing supplies, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. It’s not that.” Patrick says, covering the start of a smile with his hand, although David finds _nothing_ amusing about bathroom supply trauma. “But Xander also designs and hand-paints cornhole sets.”

“Oh my god.”

David spends the rest of the day looking on in horror as six baseball caps are sold, along with half the stock of the alleged sports balm, although it’s Gwen who buys the bulk of it for reasons David is not interested in exploring. Even relegating them to the back room doesn’t stop someone from buying one of the cornhole sets. (Which, with the words corn and hole so close together should be absolutely horrendous but are actually sleek and finely crafted, and, with the right paper lanterns and Moscow mules in hand, could be an excellent backyard game night. But. David is not telling Patrick that, not least because nobody asked him.)

The booming sales are disconcerting on a second, more ominous level: Patrick doesn’t gloat. So either David is looking worse than he thought, or Patrick is feeling sufficiently chastised so as not to rub it in.

But that mini-victory is short-lived when the following week, David comes in to find that Josie, one of their part-time employees, is no longer employed at the Rose Apothecary.

“Okay, you can’t just disappear people like we’re auditioning for the Mafia. Where did she go?”

Patrick takes too long to respond. He has spent the entire morning staring at the same document on his computer screen, and so far, he isn’t sharing it with David. 

“There are mafia auditions? Sign me up!” He finally meets David’s eyes. “I didn’t throw her in the creek wearing cement shoes, David. She had a lot going on with school and gymnastics so we mutually agreed that it wasn’t a good match.”

“And this was the royal we who discussed this, I presume, because I do not recall a conversation.”

“I’m sorry. Yes, I definitely should have consulted you,” he says and turns back to the spreadsheet. 

David stands in the doorway for a few more beats, expecting some kind of...explanation. Argument. Reaction. But Patrick is entirely lost in whatever is or isn’t happening on his computer screen, and it’s pushing all kinds of buttons in David right now. 

“That’s it?”

“What’s it?” Patrick asks. David seriously cannot play conversational chicken. This is inane.

“Are we just not going to have this discussion?”

“I’m sorry, yes, we’re going to have this discussion.” Patrick closes out of his screen and settles back in his chair. Even with whatever is distracting him, he still looks decently well-rested, which is more than David can say for himself. “I just...I thought you’d be more stressed if you had to help make the decision, because I know how much you don’t like the whole hiring process in general. I didn’t want to put anything else on your plate.”

“Well, that may be so but I don’t even think you’re handing me a plate right now, let alone putting things on it.”

And yes, David does hate the hiring process with a fiery passion but only because he can never seem to find anyone who shares his exacting standards. And he thought Patrick had them too, in his own way—the fruit wine embargo certainly seemed to indicate he did—but after the personnel changes and the baseball caps and the sports balm and the cornhole (!) sets…

Realizing there’s been no response, David waves a hand. “...Um. Hi! Still here.”

“Yes. Definitely. And I’m glad you’re here. I just...there was an issue with the quarterly taxes and I’ve been trying to figure it out—”

“Should this go on my plate?”

Patrick shakes his head, vehement. David has a sudden flashback to the words _avoid stress_ being underlined three times in Patrick’s notebook. “No definitely not. I’m the numbers guy; I’ll get it figured out.”

“Do you want a second set of eyes on it?” 

David has picked up far more of the business side of things than he ever intended. Patrick was always so excited about everything, it was hard not to just...follow suit. Before David was diagnosed, they even held Friday morning earnings briefings that, sure, could have been emails, but Patrick always brought coffee and the good bagels from that bakery in Elmington. Plus Patrick loves business—the formulas and the predictability and the forecasting—maybe as much as he loves David, and watching Patrick do what he loves made David love it. Or at least, enough of it to offer a second set of eyes from time to time.

Patrick stands up then, stretches, and comes to the doorway David is leaning against. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about Josie. She was sweet and smart and very on brand for us. We will find someone else. Together.” He kisses the side of David’s neck, ducking under his arm as he deftly changes the subject. “Have you had lunch? Do you need me out front?”

“I’m not hungry,” David says, which is true, since his appetite seems to coincide with his mood lately. Low.

Patrick makes his _the quarterly taxes aren’t cooperating_ face at David directly this time. “How about we split a sandwich and look at these numbers together? We’ll hear the bell if someone comes in.”

David knows what Patrick is doing but he lets it slide. Even if it is well-intended placation, it feels good to work together side-by-side again. 

It feels even better three bites into his half of the turkey club when David locates the broken formula and resulting calculation error in Patrick’s spreadsheet.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Patrick comes to David with any and all business-related decisions, and Ronnie recommends her nephew as Josie’s replacement. With another new hire at the store lightening their work load, they return to checking items off the Fuck-It List. 

Cocooned together in David’s favorite blanket nest on a chocolate and duvet day, they start binge-watching _Gilmore Girls._

“I refuse to go to bed until you admit that Dean is totally milquetoast and in no way good enough for Rory.”

“I don’t even think I know what that means, David. Shoot me a wiki-link and I’ll decide from there.”

A half-season later.

“Are you drooling over Milo Ventimiglia right now?”

“His name is Jess,” Patrick hisses as though David has just spoken too loudly in the library. He is positively starry-eyed. “I like his hair.”

David pats his own. “Does he remind you of someone?”

“Yeah, like James Dean in the old movies my Mom used to watch.” Patrick scooches closer, moving a pillow out of the way and burrowing into David’s side. He does a little wordless check-in to make sure David is still comfortable. “Oh, and my very handsome, well-coiffed husband.”

“Hmm yes, but I am much, much taller.”

“You are both equally well-read.” A hand covers David’s as Patrick looks up into his eyes. “I think I might go for a dark-haired bad boy who comes to a small town and realizes the power of love. Is that a type?”

“I was never a bad boy,” David whispers, running a finger over the waistband of Patrick’s joggers.

Patrick’s eyes close when David drags his knuckle downward. “Hmm.” 

“Would you like me to be?”

They have to go back to rewatch the end of that episode and the start of the next.

* * *

“I don’t like it when Rory and Lorelai fight. It feels like there’s a disturbance in the force,” Patrick complains and takes a bite of Pop-Tart, because that is proper Gilmore Girls foodstuffs, even under David’s new anniversary blanket. 

“Obviously the fashion here is Wet Seal circa 2001 but Lauren Graham can really carry off a pair of jeans. My God,” David says, clutching his chest in admiration.

“So can Luke.” 

David smiles and pokes at Patrick’s thigh. “He’s a little burlier than I thought would be your taste.”

“David, I contain multitudes.” 

“I’m going to wear a plain backwards cap and see what you do.” Pause. “I will do no such thing. But. Luke? Really?”

The next afternoon, David’s hips are starting to feel tight so he drags Patrick into the nest early and practices his mindful breathing during the theme song.

“You know, I like to think that we are the Luke and Lorelai of our community, without the weird season seven plots or April Nardini—seriously can she please fall into a hole like the weapon of plot destruction she is?” Patrick has picked up a real Sherman-Palladino speaking rhythm since they started watching. He has also made more pop culture references in the past few weeks than he has in the entire six years David has known him. “But I’m worried we might be more Taylor Doose and Kirk.” 

“That is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the worst thing you have ever said to me.”

“Okay, we're Paris and Rory, maybe,” Patrick offers, carefully snuggling into David’s shoulder.

“Better. Not great.”

* * *

[12:45 p.m.] David, there is a podcast. Alert. There is a podcast.

[12:49 p.m.] Patrick. This is not one of those confounded talkie walkies you keep threatening to get for the store. What are you talking about?

[12:49 p.m.] THE GILMORE GUYS.

[12:50 p.m.] ???

[12:51 p.m.] _Link to Gilmore Guys podcast_. This is going to change our lives. Now we have to rewatch with Demi and Kevin.

[12:52 p.m.] ohhhh. If I remember correctly, they have some very bad takes on Logan.

[12:53 p.m.] They wouldn’t DARE. I mean, he is definitely misunderstood. He starts off super-smarmy and not to be petty but he has legitimately terrible Ellen hair so maybe people can’t get over that but

[12:53 p.m.] You’re Lorelai-ing again.

[12:54 p.m.] I just get so excited. _Link to Buzzfeed quiz: Which Gilmore Girls Character Are You?_ Womp womp.

[12:58 p.m] You’re Dean aren’t you?

[12:58 p.m.] Luke actually and I’m kinda disappointed. I think it’s because I picked the hot dog as a snack. 

[12:59 p.m.] you would. But you do look very cute in a baseball hat. 

[1:06 p.m] ...so who are you?

[1:06 p.m.] nope.

[1:07 p.m.] c‘mon.

[1:07 p.m.] absolutely not.

[1:08 p.m.] omg you’re totally Mrs Kim aren’t you?

[1:08 p.m.] first of all I would never let our store get that cluttered. But. Maybe. Yes. I’m Mrs. Fucking Kim.

[1:09 p.m.] aww David. I love that you both have really strong convictions. And very distinct hairstyles.

* * *

After finishing all seven seasons of _Gilmore Girls,_ rewatching select episodes with his own Gilmore Guy and listening to the podcast when he goes for his walks, and skipping the revival for the betterment of his mental health, David adds _try the new Ethiopian place in Elmdale_ to his Fuck-It List.

He is halfway through drying and styling his hair for their night out when his shoulder spasms, sending his brush clattering onto the bathroom counter.

“Fuck. Fuck,” he splutters, digging his fingers into the muscle tissue. He may be angrier about the lopsided state of his hair than the pain. “Fuck you.”

Cursing helps.

A concerned face appears over his head in the mirror. “Did someone cut you off in rush hour bathroom traffic again?”

“Yes and they rudely took my blow out with them.”

Patrick pushes out his lower lip in sympathy when he notices David clutching his arm. “I’ll go get the heat,” he says, turning to go.

“And grab me a toque,” David tells him, rubbing his shoulder to relax it back to a more manageable five or six.

In the mirror, Patrick raises his eyebrows in question. “Maybe I could help finish—”

David shakes his head. “Oh no. That’s not—this is a science. An art. People have to study years before they’re granted access to styling—the texture is very complex. Is the thing.”

“Oh. That’s...the _thing,”_ Patrick repeats, both hands now in his pockets. It’s how he compacts himself, David knows, his attempt to fit into spaces. “Toque and heat, got it.”

When Patrick returns, he’s holding both items but David only accepts the heat wrap. 

“Listen,” he starts as he holds the warm compress to his sore muscle, not really sure if he’s actually going to go through with this. “Your hair also has a complex texture—”

“Aww, thanks.”

“Okay. Only Studious Patrick right now.” David doesn’t have an available hand to wave so he arches his eyebrows with as much authority as he can muster. “Maybe if we can find a YouTube tutorial.”

He does a status-check in the mirror. His hair is already air-drying.

“Ugh, there’s no time.”

Patrick circles him, inspecting. David already regrets this decision. 

“So you want like…” Patrick makes a gesture around his head that indicates _bouffant_ or maybe _divorce._ He catches David’s murderous expression reflecting back at him. “Baby, just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

And Patrick does. He’s tentative at first, but there’s a rhythm to the movement, and he understands rhythm, even if his hips don’t always possess it. It’s also physics and geometry and some luck, so after a few minutes and some very explicit, almost tense, instructions, David has perfectly symmetrical hair that looks like he has just done it with his own two hands.

Patrick applies the finishing balm with his fingertips as instructed and leans down to kiss David’s hairline after they both complete a quick appraisal. He lingers for a moment, his lips still grazing skin. “You can still wear the toque if you hate it,” he soothes when he notices the wobble in David’s lower lip. “I won’t be offended.”

“No, it’s perfect, thank you,” he says, voice inexplicably thick. 

It doesn’t make sense to David why he wants to cry, why he’s feeling so fucking vulnerable, or why getting exactly what he asked for is bothering him. 

Maybe next time he’ll just wear the stupid hat.

* * *

The Ethiopian place in Elmdale is sadly mediocre but the shoulder spasm serves as an apparent precursor to a new flare, one that meds and light exercise can dull, but not vanquish. David still wants to try, though, which he is taking as a positive.

“Hey there, sleepyhead,” Patrick greets, inserting himself under the hand David is about to slap against the wall as an aid to progress. It’s Thursday, their late day, and David has slept until the last possible second. “I thought I was going to have to call the nursery rhyme people or at the very least, start to build a nest in your inevitable sleeping beard.”

“Ugh.” David doesn’t even have the energy yet to be thoroughly annoyed. “Let me fall if you’re going to be cute about it.”

“I wouldn’t.” Patrick makes a sympathetic face as David struggles his way to their en suite with Patrick’s shoulder providing escort. “I can go in for you today if you need me to. Marin’s coming in after school and can close up.”

The part-time employees are more work than he originally realized. But David left mid-project yesterday and his vision needs to be realized without interference. The new organic skincare line isn’t going to arrange itself. 

He does compromise so that Patrick covers for an hour while he gets himself moving, but his body’s resistance continues through the majority of the day, until he snaps at Marin for not being able to balance the drawer as they are attempting to leave.

She cries, which makes him feel awful, so after he apologizes and locks up for the evening, he cries. He just wants to go home, eat pizza, and not wear real pants for another second.

Except when he unlocks the front door, he finds the kitchen island and table are both lined with plant...shards? and Patrick is happily filling larger pots with soil where David erroneously assumed there would be...not plant shards and soil.

“What is all this?” David waves a hand at the garden ephemera, doing his best not to be terribly dramatic about dirt on his quartz countertop, when really, if he could get his finger on a nuclear button, he’d press it. He is showing great restraint, is his point.

Patrick glances up. “Karen sent some plants home with me and I wanted to get them repotted. Sorry, I got a little carried away.“

“Overzealous repotting will not be tolerated,” David says, but he doesn’t think he’s joking. “Is outside not available?”

“Well, it was getting dark and I didn’t want to invite bugs to come in with them,” he says, lovingly patting around the greenery in a circular pattern. “I’ll clean it up before the pizza gets here.” His eyes flick up. “I promise.”

Casting around for something else to be frustrated about, David picks up a foil-covered plate and inspects it as if it is laden with anthrax. “Is this more plants?”

“No, David, those are cookies. Karen sent those too.” 

When David moves closer, he can make out a smudge of dark red lipstick on Patrick’s cheekbone. Apparently while David was busy making teenage girls cry, Patrick was the belle of the garden club, getting kissed by everyone’s grandmother. 

David sniffs delicately. His appetite hasn’t completely returned but he might be able to jog it with some proper sugary treats. “What kind of cookie?”

“Chocolate chip and pinwheel butter tarts,” Patrick responds, wiping his hands off on the apron David just noticed he was wearing. It has a blue P embroidered on the pocket. Patrick catches David’s eye and follows his gaze down. “Ha, one of the Garden Pats made this for me and I couldn’t refuse.”

Somehow, the garden club has more Pats per capita than County Cork. And they’re all wearing capri pants and white sandals. David’s Pat fits right in.

“Hmm, it’s very dashing,” David says, feeling more and more uncharitable by the second. Somehow Patrick’s good day is managing to make David’s worse, which is unfair on multiple levels. “I just...wish you would have done that...anywhere but my kitchen.”

“Your kitchen. Yes. I promise, your kitchen will be as good as new when I’m finished.” Patrick studies his face with his hands still buried in a fern. Or a violet. Or whatever it is. David doesn’t know. It will be labeled and named soon enough, placed next to Godzilla the monstera and Dove, the chocolate soldier. “Are you okay? You seem kind of tetchy.”

David’s nerves are actually starting to scrape under his skin, like they’re clawing at floorboards. “I think that may be an understatement actually.” Patrick is so content and disrupting his good mood seems cruel. “I might need to go to bed and just...reset.”

“Okay.” Patrick’s brows knit for a moment but he tempers his reaction quickly. “I’ll save you some pizza?”

David makes a noise of assent, then rubs tiredly at his eyes, bumping underneath his glasses. Fatigue is sinking into his bones and he’s frustrated with himself for reasons he can’t name. He stands in place for a few seconds longer before he speaks again. “Goodnight.” 

He spends an hour soaking in a hot bath with epsom and by the time he’s out, there is a plate of pizza and a fresh chocolate chip cookie on a tray by his bedside. He doesn’t believe in eating in the bedroom generally but AS continually softens some of his more hard and fast rules. Some rules have worn down to the nub.

Next to the plate is a card and two movie tickets that Patrick has made by hand, which isn’t saying much from an artistic standpoint. But JULIA STILES-A-THON is written on each one in Patrick’s familiar block lettering, along with Admit One, tomorrow’s date, and ‘dusk’ as the time. 

Inside the card is a note: _Today was hard but tomorrow there will be popcorn and Smarties and at least two different kinds of ice cream, if you should decide to join me. You won’t even have to leave your own backyard. I’ll pick you up at 8. I love you. Sweet dreams._

_-your garden Pat_

Guilt mixes with relief mixes with affection; it’s a riotously conflicting amalgam of emotions, but an almost welcome one. Welcome enough that he finishes the coldish pizza, the cookie, and after writing Patrick a note accepting his offer, falls asleep more easily than he has all week.

* * *

“Sir, your chariot awaits.” Patrick gestures broadly to the pick-up he has borrowed from the ubiquitous Karen, who gained full custody of the truck from Ronnie in their divorce settlement. It is terribly obvious that Patrick derives a perverse sense of satisfaction from the entire situation, and even though David adores Ronnie, he likes seeing Patrick so gleeful.

Tucked under a field of yellow-white stars, David curls up in the truck bed, cuddled in as many comforters and blankets and quilts as they could locate, as Julia Stiles is projected onto the broad side of their shed. By the time he’s eaten his licorice, popcorn, and one bowl of cookies-and-cream, he’s content. Maybe tonight isn’t perfect, but it certainly feels right. 

He makes a short walking circuit around the side-yard to stretch while Patrick switches from _Save the Last Dance_ to _10 Things I Hate About You_. Then David settles in the vee of his legs, back against his chest. He rolls his head to look up at Patrick, who is curled around him, his chin hooked at David’s shoulder. 

“Today is better,” David pronounces. Patrick responds by kissing the skin right below the band of David’s toque where it covers the undoneness of his hair. “I’m sorry about last night.”

“That isn’t—you don’t need to apologize for a bad day. It’s not your fault.” 

Sometimes David can’t tell if it’s Patrick talking or something he memorized from one of his many pamphlets, but either way, David needs to hear it. Sandy has told him the same thing more than once, that AS happened to him but it didn’t come from him, or his body, or his actions. He hates that he has to be reminded. 

“I have thick skin,” Patrick adds.

“No, you have translucent skin.” Which is true, as Patrick positively glows in the moonlight. “You deserve more than that.”

Patrick strokes David’s shoulder lightly. “I like when you just let your hair go curly and kind of wild now.”

“It’s an artful wild.” It’s not. It’s a _my shoulders hurt and I can’t use my round brush to make the swoop_ _because I don’t want to ask for more help_ kind of wild, but it’s fine. He has good hair. “How did we get here again? I was apologizing—“

“And I’ve never kissed a boy wearing glasses before, so thank you for that teenage fantasy come true,” Patrick continues.

“Hi, I’m fairly certain we’re having two separate conversations right now.”

“No.” Patrick shakes his head. “It’s a give and a take, right? There’s going to be bad days and then good days and days in between that are just...days. And we’re gonna snap at each other, probably. But then,” Patrick kisses him again, this time on the shell of his ear, “then we’ll do something like this.”

He shifts then, unwrapping David like a gift, casting the top quilt aside and covering David with the tent of his own body. David leans up into the touch, running his fingers through Patrick’s hair. 

“We definitely could not have done this in my Corolla,” Patrick says to the side of David’s neck, before he nips at it playfully and moans as he grinds against David’s hip.

“Shh,” David quiets him. “You’ll bother the goats.”

Patrick looks at him with glassy eyes. “Hmm. Or are you more worried the goats will bother you?” 

Yes, he is worried since last week after one of their walks, a roving gang of Mr Blankenship's goats ended up loitering like methy youths on the front porch of their home. They were basically the petting zoo equivalent of _West Side Story,_ snapping their hooves and circling him. He finally had to shoo them away with the tree branch he was using as a walking stick because he’d gotten tired on the way home. Once safely inside, he joked to Patrick it was exactly the right number of goats to shake a stick at—an absolute falsehood because it was fucking traumatic. Zero goats is the only correct number of goats.

“They are cloven-hoofed menaces,” David reminds Patrick, deeply hoping Mr. Blankenship locked all the pens. Or prisons. Wherever one keeps errant goat gangs.

Patrick slides his hand under David’s chin and kisses him softly. “I think I know another way we can scare them.” 

Threat of impending farm animals aside, this is the superior drive-in, David thinks, as Patrick distracts him fully for the rest of the movie.

Later that night, as David attempts and fails to reach that same level of comfort, he wonders if the David he was before he was diagnosed would have enjoyed frolicking in the bed of a truck as much as he did tonight.

He’d like to think yes, but AS has already started to change the things he does with Patrick, the way he holds himself, the way he cares for himself. It has already changed how he works and sleeps and exercises. It has changed Patrick and how he works and sleeps and cares for himself. Being forced to admit he can’t do it all has made Patrick more energetic, more optimistic. Maybe David should try it. 

But David isn't sure he's ready for AS to change any more than it already has.

* * *

From David’s perspective, the AS has made him more determined. From Patrick’s perspective, determined means reckless. 

When Patrick comes home from his weekend tax seminar, he is less than thrilled to find David standing on a precarious ladder in their living room, cringing at the sheer amount of insect carcasses populating the ledges of their window frames.

“You were supposed to be, and tell me if I’ve got the terminology right, ‘communing with your knits.’ That was what you said in your text, right?”

Patrick looks very small as he examines his phone for evidence, but his irritation easily carries the distance required to reach David. David feels his own irritation climb in proportion, winding up and coiling in his belly like a hissing snake.

“I did commune with them. Or at least, I started to.” David jabs the hand not holding the vacuum attachment but doesn’t climb down. “And then the stupid light bulb went out.”

“Aha,” Patrick says in a way that indicates none of his questions have been answered. The irritation coils more tightly, like David is expected to prove some kind of hypothesis: Why I Climbed A Ladder; or I Had Very Good Reasons, Damnit.

“And I can’t check for fabric pilling or potential moth holes—which, let me get back to that—“

“I’ll put a pin in it.” Patrick nods, but gestures for David to go on as he tucks his phone into his back pocket and crosses his arms.

“I don’t know how you expect me to do quality control under the cover of darkness. So I changed the bulb and discovered what had to be a deeply unhealthy amount of dust and allergens lurking on all the taller surfaces, which we rarely reach, and I thought, well, how many more window and door frames can we possibly have?”

“Too many.”

“We get very good natural light,” David insists. “And once I finished, I went down to the pantry and realized we had a whole box of LED bulbs we intended to use to replace the old fluorescent ones because, and stop me if I’m wrong, they’re more cost-effective—”

“Yes, David.”

“And energy-saving and longer lasting. Which means—”

“We don’t have to replace them as often. I know. I was going to switch them but—”

“Even on the ladder, you have trouble reaching.”

“Excuse me?” The little lines by Patrick’s mouth deepen. 

“And just to circle back to the moths, sucking these fuckers into vacuum cleaner oblivion has truly been cathartic.”

Patrick's mouth twitches as it considers a smile. “I’m glad, David. But can you please get down?”

David scowls at him. This is his thing now. He’ll go to...exterminator school (regardless if it’s a thing; he’ll fucking start one) and do this for everyone in town if he wants to. He’ll get Ray to go into business with him. It isn’t too much; he’s never more than thirty feet from a soft surface on which to rest. It’s one less thing for Patrick to have to do anyway. “I have three more ledges in here and then the foyer.” 

“Well then, let me. I wouldn’t mind some insect-related catharsis, especially if it means you safely on the ground.”

Normally, David would acquiesce, but this feels important. Like he should dig in. “If it helps, you don’t need to watch,” he says coolly.

“David.” Patrick is terse now, voice tight, but after a second—a long, tense, and arduous second—his face softens slightly. He turns to leave, but not until after he gives David’s calf muscle a gentle squeeze, mumbling, “At least we’re still keeping the LED lighting industry in business.”

David inhales and exhales and shimmies off the feeling that this really isn’t about lightbulbs or ladders or milky exoskeletons. He doesn’t plan on telling Patrick about the way his shoulders have started to twinge, or the tiny spasm he had in his lower back when he twisted to really dig into a corner. Of course, he may also stubbornly linger on the last window frame after he moves the ladder, changing attachments and brushing once, twice, three times across before declaring it satisfactory. 

* * *

October blasts into November with crisp wind and vibrant colors. The calendar bends with social engagements for the holidays, fundraisers, networking events, and David’s attendance is hit or miss. It’s not always possible for Patrick to skip as well, and anyway, he wouldn’t want him to. Which means a lot of days and nights alone.

Tonight, David’s pressed suit hangs on the back of the closet door like an elegantly tailored talisman of the night he should be having.

Instead he is fiddling in his sketchbook and planning a fantasy trip to the Northern Lights to distract himself from his eight-on-the-pain-scale day. 

Nothing can distract him from the increasingly drunken texts he’s been receiving from his husband and his best friend as they carouse at an event he was meant to attend. The last one was a blurry selfie of Patrick and Stevie in front of a pillow fort, which made no sense at all since the important networking event they’ve been jokingly referring to as the Wine and Cheese Ball was black tie and held in a legitimate hotel ballroom. He and Patrick were supposed to have a getaway weekend there afterward, but. 

The front door clatters open and voices and laughter float up the stairs. 

“Shh, David could be asleep,” Patrick says in a loud stage-whisper.

Stevie volleys with an exaggerated shush. “If he’s asleep, I get his cheese,” she slurs.

“No. He will kill us. Me, specifically. No.”

“Half of his cheese?” Stevie bargains.

“Absolutely none of his cheese.”

“Fine, then I’m going to moooove his cheese.” 

Something thuds and then clatters. Hopefully Patrick employed some kind of martial art to protect the aforementioned cheese. David hopes he at least wrapped it up in a napkin. Cloth, preferably. His rules haven’t softened that much.

“Shhhhhhh!” Stevie again.

“Why aren’t you two up the stairs yet? We don’t live in a tower!” David yells, putting an end to Honors Floor Quiet Hours. 

“Yay! You’re awake!” Patrick stage-whispers again as he takes shape in the doorway. His tie is loose around his collar and there’s a wine blush high on his cheeks and he’s devastatingly handsome. He looked great when he left the house all buttoned up and neat but he looks even better now, loosened with wine and a night free of responsibility. 

Stevie pushes him into the room with her shoulder. “If lost, please return to David Rose.”

“Aww.” David’s arms raise to invite Patrick in and he comes easily, dragging his hand clumsily down David’s face and kissing him with too-tart lips. Up close they’re stained almost purple and David makes a face at his breath. “Eh, you smell flammable.”

“Don’t worry, Gary brought us home,” Patrick replies as Stevie gracelessly crawls onto the bed next to them, still in her heels, because she has no couth. “Do you want us to leave you alone? I told Stevie we could watch the Royal Albert Hall anniversary performance of Les Mis but we can go downstairs if you’re not up for it.”

David can’t remember if Patrick got this obsessive about _Cabaret_ or _Fun Home_ or _Waitress_ or _The Prom_ , but _Les Mis_ has been closed for months and he’s still driving David to the edge of reason with it.

Doesn’t matter because Stevie is already pawing at the duvet cover and burrowing underneath like an inebriated groundhog. “David doesn’t mind.”

David looks at her and over to Patrick, who squeezes David’s thigh in apology. “No, David doesn’t mind.” He does feel a bit looser thanks to an evening with his TENS machine and a recent dose of pain medication. “So how was it?”

“Oh my god, it was ah—mazing.” Stevie struggles to sit back up against their headboard. “Patrick was the Daniel Day Lewis of the Small Business Association’s Night of A Thousand Awards. He had everyone, like, so into it.”

“So into what?” 

“I cannot disclose our mission or it will self-destruct,” Stevie recites in a low, robotic tone. So nothing terribly different from how she usually talks. “We were spies. Like, briefly. In our twenties.”

“We were also a brother and sister resistance team.”

“I grew up on the streets. And he’s a student of the revolution.”

“Together, we fight crime,” they say in unison.

“Oh my god,” David groans. “Can we never show our faces in those meetings again?”

“I mean, I think they only saw a little bit of Patrick’s butt, so—”

“What?!”

“It was like a tiny...incident. Miniscule.” Stevie holds her thumb and index finger a few centimeters apart to indicate how miniscule an incident, and Patrick reaches over to expand it to twice the distance. David is not soothed. “Once we got everyone to the barricades—”

Patrick hoots with laughter. Literally hoots. “Oh gosh, I forgot about the barricades. How on earth did we convince people to build them out of couch cushions in the lobby?”

“I think it’s because you and Ronnie did a very convincing performance of the Confrontation.”

“Oh yeah, we’re definitely going to need to send her another gift basket.” Patrick looks up at David, only somewhat sheepish. “David, it was so much fun.”

It is annoying to be around drunk people when he’s not drunk, so David feels like he has just cause to be annoyed. 

“And when you got the emcee to announce the Soapy Gnome as the Shouty Backslappers—”

“I mean, they were obnoxious. Plus, you owe me fifty bucks.”

“Um no, I think I bet you double or nothing on how many times Ray would accidentally insult someone’s business acumen and I came closest.”

“Yes, but then, if memory serves, you bet _me_ triple or nothing on how many times David’s dad would text you on Monday asking how to unmute himself on Zoom. And then he immediately texted to ask you for the code. He’s playing right into my hands.”

“I mean I think I can still win out but those RMG conference calls are way too early in the day to be drinking.” She reaches over David to slap at Patrick’s shoulder. “Oh! But I did get Tony to say ‘onomatopoeia’ in conversation so that, my friend, is a triple word score.”

Patrick clutches at his abdomen. “I think my stomach hurts from laughing.”

“Could’ve been the bucket of wine you drank,” David says.

“Or all that cheese,” Stevie pipes in. “Speaking of which, David, you don’t want yours, right?”

Maybe it’s subconscious, but Patrick’s hand instinctively covers his jacket pocket. Fuck, David loves him. 

“No, you may not have my cheese.” He holds out a hand and Patrick places a folded cloth napkin in his palm. He immediately feels one-third less annoyed that everyone had fun without him. Even though his stomach is still borderline, he unwraps and devours the well-protected and now hand-delivered…”Ooh, that’s a nice gruyere.”

“There’s manchego too,” Patrick murmurs, rubbing a little uncoordinatedly at David’s arm.

“Oh my god, get a room,” Stevie groans.

“This is my room!” 

Patrick responds with a smacking kiss to the side of David’s neck. He really is just this side of sloppy. “Hey, you know what, I’ll take Stevie back downstairs. We shouldn’t be bothering you.”

“No, it’s fine. She’ll pass out soon and if history is any indication, so will you.” 

Making a performatively wounded face, Patrick stands up and crosses to what is usually his side of the bed. He gently coaxes Stevie up and guides her toward the bedroom door. “Come on, champ, let’s get back to the barricades.”

They stumble out of the room, the drunk leading the drunk.

David tries to get comfortable again despite the loss of Patrick’s body heat and the echo of Stevie’s laughter, but it seems futile. He can hear the television downstairs; the swell of orchestral music, applause, operatic notes. He puts in his earbuds to drown out the sound of far-off giggling and the wild skirmish of two tipsy people attempting to be quiet. 

Between when David drops off to sleep and when he wakes pre-dawn to shift onto his side and rearrange his pillows, he sees Patrick has collapsed in his usual spot, still wearing half his suit.

* * *

The next morning, Patrick’s coloring is absolutely pallid, and it’s clear from the general state of things that they will require an extensive joint napping session in the very near future.

David stretches out his hip while Patrick staggers to the medicine cabinet and returns with painkillers for both of them. 

“You need food with yours,” Patrick mumbles to himself, dropping the medication on the bedside table and disappearing through the doorway before David can respond.

He returns in a few minutes with four pieces of toast stacked precariously on a napkin, most of which he deposits on David’s nightstand, and two tall glasses of water. He keeps a glass and a piece of toast for himself, swaying slightly when he turns to pad back over to his side.

When he climbs back into bed, Patrick glances over at David the way he always does, his little check-in to ensure David is settled and comfortable and aware that _we’re in this together._

David has taken for granted how much he needs that glance, values it, relies on it. 

“Hey,” he says a bit breathlessly as he is assaulted with newfound clarity, “can you do me a favor?”

“Yeah, of course. Anything.” Patrick starts to put two feet back on the floor, maybe assuming David is about to ask him to go make a smoothie or grab a magazine from the living room.

“The way you look at me—I love the way you look at me. Can you never stop looking at me like that?”

“Well, I love looking at you, so you’re actually doing me the favor.” Patrick swings his legs up onto the bed, angling himself back toward David. He must catch the look in David’s eye or the start of tears because his gaze turns apprehensive. “Hey.”

David swipes at his traitorous eyes in an attempt to destroy the evidence.

“Hi.” Patrick inches closer, bobbing woozily for a moment after he moves. He wraps David into his arms, moving his hand slowly up and down the length of David’s spine. “I’m sorry about how obnoxious Stevie and I were last night,” he starts.

“Well, she’s always obnoxious,” David dismisses. “I think it was harder to watch you go off gallivanting and come back all…refreshed.”

Patrick sits with that for a moment. “Refreshed is an awfully nice way to say ‘wasted and oblivious.’” He takes a fortifying breath. “I’ve been putting the pieces together here and I think I might be screwing up again.”

“What?” David asks wetly from the join of Patrick’s neck where his head is now resting. If Patrick asked him right now where his physical pain was, he would say three. If he asked him about emotional pain, well. Gwen. “What’re you talking about?”

“Just. Lately I’ve noticed...I think that—maybe I’ve had it in my head that if I could keep your stress levels low, I could help keep flares at bay, and you’d be...comfortable. You’d feel better. But that—that’s not enough.”

What pain level is higher than Gwen, David wonders. _Gwenfinity._ “Yeah, no, it hasn’t been.” 

“No, it hasn’t been.” Patrick sneaks his hand under the hem of David’s sleep shirt, rests his palm against skin. “I know I tend to get...singularly focused, and that’s not always helpful. So. I want to do better.”

David inhales through the tears that are now freely flowing. “Yeah, I want to do better, too.”

“Have you talked to Sandy about how you’ve been feeling?” Patrick lays those words very gently at David’s feet. Another offering. It’s better than a word search.

He sniffles. “A little. Maybe not...a lot.” Sandy is wonderful and scattered and doubly supportive because she has AS too. She makes David want to please her with how well he’s doing. Which is not something he’s accustomed to. He isn’t sure where that’s coming from. Then again, he’s never felt like he’s had to shrink to fit into his own life before.

“Okay.” Patrick hands him a tissue, pauses to allow David to blow his nose, wipe his tears. “That’s totally up to you.” 

“Thank you.”

“I think I might talk to Sandy though? About me? Or ask Sandy to point to someone I could talk to? A group maybe. I like groups. Groups are good.” Patrick is starting to Lorelai. They each do look fantastic in a good pair of jeans. “Yeah. I’ll call Sandy in the morning.”

David hugs him then, hard, maybe too hard, because his shoulder blades twinge. 

“Do you want me to rub your back?” Patrick asks, noting the reaction. 

“No, I’d rather you didn’t.” David pauses. “It’s not personal. It’s the...pain thing.”

They’ve talked about it before, in passing, how David doesn’t want to associate pain with Patrick, which starts to happen when David has to grimace under his well-meaning touch. 

“Yeah, I understand.” Patrick kisses his nose, then looks a bit lost. He hasn’t taken his own pain relievers yet and David knows his head has to be pounding. Even superhuman Patrick isn’t impervious to hangovers. 

“Hey, take your medicine and nap. This will all still be here when you wake up,” David suggests.

David doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep now anyway. Maybe once Patrick is down for the count, he can go for a short walk, just to the end of the driveway even, and clear his head.

Patrick does a brief scan, then makes his decision. “Okay. A nap sounds...absolutely necessary, honestly. I feel like blazing hot garbage.”

“Oh well, I wouldn’t know anything about _that,”_ David deadpans and Patrick gives a little snort.

That breaks the tension enough for each of them to take their respective medications. David nibbles slowly at his toast, and, when he finishes, arranges himself for temporary comfort.

Patrick peeks over the pillow wall David has become an expert in building. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair?”

David is still feeling deeply possessive about his hair. “I don’t think so, no,” he rebuffs. 

“Okay.” Patrick is quiet for a moment, hands folded over his chest. “Would you mind playing with mine? I think it’ll help me sleep.”

David motions for him to come closer. “Yeah, of course I will, yes.”

Patrick’s entire face changes into something pleased and shy after he moves to give David better access and stroke into the growing waves. It is relaxing in its own way, pulling through the soft strands, breathing in and out with Patrick who seems to lean into and absorb every touch. 

“It’s getting so long,” David whispers, almost loath to disrupt the quiet. He’s still looking for that _found_ feeling he’s so desperately missing, after feeling so fucking lost.

“Ugh, it’s too long.” Patrick was initially game to start growing out the hair he’d been keeping at bay for so many years, but it seems like lately it is more a lack of available time than choice or preference keeping him out of the barber chair.

“I like it.” He tugs lightly on a longer curl then tucks it behind Patrick’s ear. Patrick gives a contented sigh. “It’s so lush. Such a complex texture. You should use my new shampoo.”

“Hmm,” is all Patrick can manage, melted against the down barricade. Even from the awkward angle, David can see Patrick’s eyelids getting heavier, the amber fringe of his eyelashes brushing at his cheekbones.

Scratching one last time at Patrick’s scalp, David listens to his husband’s breathing go deeper and more even.

Once Patrick falls asleep, David decides to walk. _Moving helps._ David is all too aware that Patrick’s efforts to help have blended with AS, a monolith of the lack of choice that surrounds his days and nights. More and more, he finds himself resisting Patrick in the same way he resists the pain, whenever he thinks he can get away with it. Sometimes, even when he knows he can’t.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Tom Petty's Walls.
> 
> Special thanks to friends who helped brainstorm 1001 parts of this chapter (namely the baseball hat scene): blueink3, missgee, and tinn. Also I never would have the recipe/pork buns runner if it weren't for this_is_not_nothing so many thanks and my apologies to David Chang. I am sure your pork buns are delightful.


	4. all the nights that joy has slept

Winter is the worst.

The first weeks of the season have been brutal so far, full of arctic blasts and blizzard-like conditions, and with the long summer and warmer fall, David forgot how easy it is for his body to succumb to each and every fluctuation in barometric pressure and temperature.

As a result, getting out of bed in the morning has started to feel like tiptoeing through a minefield—one wrong shift of weight or period of standing that lasts more than a few minutes causes joint pain so intense he gets nauseous. 

It is never a good sign when the meteorologist (jacket off, sleeves rolled up, tie vaguely askew) interrupts _Sunrise Bay_ to predict massive amounts of snow. Especially when Vivian Blake is mid-quadruple slap while dangling from a fifth-story window.

David should have postponed pork buns, but he stubbornly forges ahead, determined even though he’s dripping sweat from the exertion of...breathing. His entire body feels heavy, like he’s carrying bags of bowling balls on every limb. It hasn’t kept him from sitting at the kitchen table, waiting impatiently for dough to rise, and watching the clock as the minutes tick painfully by. 

Patrick still isn’t home.

It's fine. He texted a few minutes ago saying he had to make a stop, so he probably isn’t stuck in a snowbank somewhere. Plus they got snow tires for their new SUV, which is easier for David to get in and out of than the sedan that replaced Patrick’s Corolla. So Patrick is definitely safe and David probably shouldn’t feel this fucking anxious.

Twenty minutes pass, then thirty minutes pass, and David’s phone buzzes with another text. _On my way._

Between the first text and this one, these are the only eight words they’ve exchanged since this breakfast this morning. The words they exchanged then were somewhat less cordial as David waved a tense hand in front of their empty refrigerator. “I’m not sure how you expect me to eat these—these—ground wood chips without liquid reinforcements,” he said.

“Well, I was going to stop at the store yesterday to get milk and several other demands but instead I spent four hours after we closed running all over Elm County looking for the mentholated cream you required.”

“And yet returned with zero.”

“It wasn’t in stock! Anywhere in the Greater Elms! Which I know because I was at every pharmacy, in the Greater Elms, looking.” Patrick ran his hand through his hair in that pre-explosive way of his. Not that he exploded, ever. It was generally more imploding. David didn’t have the energy to care either way. “And had you not insisted we discontinue carrying the sports balm, you might actually have some.”

“Well I also still need milk, which we don’t carry either,” David spat and Patrick threw up his hands, stomping out the door for work.

Which may be the actual reason David is anxious.

It’s almost twelve hours later and David’s pain-fueled irritation that ruptured into nervousness is on its way to being papered over in resentment and smothered by exhaustion. 

He must fall asleep in his chair because when he wakes, Patrick is standing over him looking ashen, snowflakes still glittering crisply in his lashes and hair. _He must not have been wearing his toque_ , David thinks as his brain slowly comes back online.

“Hi,” he says softly, like David is a horse who might spook. “Let me help you upstairs.” 

David shakes his head. Or he tries to. “No, just the sofa.” David’s voice emerges in a rasp. He wonders how long he’s been asleep. He also knows he’s not going to make it up the stairs, even with Patrick’s help. 

There’s some jockeying around and scraping of chair legs against unpolished floors but Patrick gets David maneuvered over to the couch with minimum fuss. David knows it can’t be easy because the energy he’s able to expend is at base levels, but Patrick does have a low center of gravity, so that must help. Within minutes, he’s under his blanket with a cold compress, positioned on pillows, and his water, meds, book, remote, and phone are all within easy reach. 

“I think we might have to put the pork buns on hold for a while,” Patrick says, still kneeling at David’s side. He removes David’s glasses, folds them up, and places them on top of his phone. Every movement is practiced. “It’s been a tough couple of weeks.”

“Mmm,” is his only reply.

Patrick heaves a ragged breath and leans his forehead against the apple of David’s cheek, grabbing hold of the swollen hand David now has curled on his chest. He was forced to take off his wedding rings this morning because of the swelling, and he swears it’s why they fought. Like the rings are amulets and without them, his power is gone. 

Without his glasses and with the general haze of pain, everything is fuzzy. He can still see the fresh scrapes across the skin of Patrick’s pale knuckles when he glances down at their joined hands. “What happened?” 

“Bob has a heavy bag,” Patrick replies, as if that explains anything. “I just kept picturing the bag as AS and...Gwen was right. I do feel a little better.” He flexes his fingers gingerly. “I’ve never thrown a real punch in my life though, so next time, gloves I guess.”

“Patrick,” David gasps. He wants to kiss the raw skin but to do so involves moving his neck and his neck feels like fire, so he doesn’t. He hates feeling this weak.

Patrick goes on. “But on the bright side, we have tripled our sales projections for the holidays.”

“Patrick.” 

“Also, I’m sorry about this morning.” Patrick takes a deep breath and looks away, studying the fireplace. David frowns at the back of Patrick’s head. He sounds so miserable, and lost. “I feel—I feel awful about it. It wasn’t you that I was angry with. At all. I’m just...sorry.”

“Stupid milk,” David hears himself say, as if all the energy left in his body is going toward forming those two words. There are conversations they need to have but not...now. 

“Anyway,” Patrick says, and it comes out broken, “I’m going to let you sleep.” He turns back to press a kiss to the curve of David’s ear, his eyelid, the corner of his mouth. He pauses, smelling like woodsmoke and cedar hand soap from the store. “Call me if you need me.”

David flickers in and out of wakefulness, a ghost in the machine. Patrick, cross-legged next to the couch in his button-down, a pan of Kraft dinner wedged into the negative space between his knees. Patrick, wearing sweatpants, trading out one ice pack for another, tenderly rubbing balm into David’s swollen hands and fingers. Patrick, huddled under a throw blanket in the recliner, one eye perpetually trained on David, unsleeping. 

* * *

Things don’t really improve much from there.

David does gather enough strength to leave the sofa and make it back into his bed, but every day it gets harder and harder to leave once he’s nested.

The texts from Stevie asking _where r u?_ become more and more frequent because David doesn’t know how to tell her that he can’t stay awake to listen to her story about Roland frightening guests over his graduation tradition with Jocelyn. He has to cancel plans for the Wobbly Elm, for the botanical gardens, even for weed-and-movie night because of eights and nines and Gwens on the pain scale.

She does eventually show up at his bedside to call him an asshole, but afterward she ends up giving him the fiercest hug and crying a little. Nothing excessive, but enough to make them both uncomfortable. He knows he looks awful. She spends the rest of the day in his nest with him, reading his magazines and insisting he let her paint his toenails because _that is what people do_ until he asks her when precisely she noticed and/or cared what people did. 

“Okay, fine, I saw it in a movie,” she admits, finally.

“Which one?” He demands. 

“One where someone…you know,” she makes the universal gesture of what Patrick calls _je t'aime blehhh,_ an overdramatic, scenery-chewing death scene. She peeks at him through one of her now closed eyes.

“Okay, first of all. AS is all kinds of fucked up but I am not _dying."_

She gives him the levelest of gazes, like he is the man-spreading bao overcrowding her steamer. “Well, remind your face.”

She compromises by letting him walk her through a couple steps of skincare so he doesn’t turn to dust and blow away. She does a lackluster job, apparently not possessing Patrick’s gift of direction-following or attention to detail. Then he lets her paint his toenails anyway. He says thank you and his voice doesn’t wobble.

Stevie may have browbeaten her way in, but that doesn’t change how David responds to anyone else. Maybe it’s different with Stevie because they’re two halves of a whole. Or because when she sees him at his worst, he doesn’t mind, because she’s also the worst, by which he means she’s the best. It’s a complicated math problem he hasn’t quite figured out.

When Alexis calls to schedule a visit, David declines, terrified he won’t be able to follow her around or take her shopping. But more than that, she’ll finally see exactly what he’s been dealing with. He doesn’t want her to see how much the AS is taking from him. From both of them.

Patrick is…David isn’t sure how Patrick is. Patrick is busy. Their extended holiday store hours have always been lucrative, but this year David wonders at what cost. Meds and food and kisses are delivered promptly and there’s an almost constant low hum of activity coming from the office or the kitchen. Patrick comes to bed at his regularly scheduled time but David never sees him sleep. 

It doesn’t help that after they think the worst of this flare is over, David spends a weekend hospitalized due to an allergic reaction to his newest medication. A clearly terrified Patrick posts himself at his bedside, rumpled and vigilant, and David is released with a new biologic the doctor is confident will reduce up to sixty percent of his symptoms. In time.

At his follow-up appointment, his doctor suggests David might benefit from a warmer, drier, more consistent weather pattern, just to get over the new-medication hump.

“Well, with climate change, we might get that in Eastern Canada sooner than we’re willing to admit,” Patrick jokes, picking at the sleeve of his sweater. His expression almost matches the level of nausea David has been feeling over the past few weeks. “Not a lot of deserts in the area.”

“My parents live in Los Angeles,” David offers. Patrick’s head snaps up.

“Huh.” Patrick’s now-healed fingers start working overtime, dancing at his cuff. “Yeah, I mean, a few weeks in the sun might be…”

“It might be good to get some relief,” David finishes and he tries not to look over at Patrick. 

At his side, Patrick coughs and readjusts in his chair. They wrap up the visit with instructions for the new injectable and ride home in silence, but out of the corner of his eye, David sees Patrick’s jaw working. 

“What are you thinking?” David asks.

Patrick is silent but for the _tap tap tap_ of his fingers against the steering wheel. “If you think that L.A. would help, David, I think you should talk to your parents and do it,” he says evenly. Too evenly.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I don’t need to be convinced. I seem to have misplaced the plans for the weather regulator I was building and you’re...it’s been hard.”

“Yes.” Hard is downplaying it, just a tad. Between his flares and their exhaustion, disagreements keep springing up between them. They’re not always as easily-resolved as the milk.

Patrick doesn’t respond. 

He keeps seeing Patrick’s scraped knuckles, the tender skin, ripped and raw. “I mean, I’ll be out of your hair. You can slow down again. It’ll be a vacation for you as much as it is for me.”

“I don’t want to slow down.” Patrick’s eyes stay on the road. “And it isn’t a vacation.”

* * *

Patrick delivers him to the airport two weeks later. David will be gone two weeks, three at most, just long enough to recover and restore some energy and give him a chance to escape Canadian winter. David has been able to exercise again a bit, move around more, but he’s nowhere near where he needs to be for them to have a new-normal life.

“It’s not a long flight but it’s long enough you’ll need to get up and stretch at least once an hour. Hydrate. Don’t—“

“I have your instructions in my carry-on, thank you.”

Patrick’s mouth turns down. “Yeah, sorry. I’m...you can take care of yourself, I know.”

David isn’t one-hundred percent convinced of that, but all the scrutiny makes David uncomfortable, and no two people in the world scrutinize him less than his parents when they’re busy. 

“I’ll be back before you know I’m gone,” David tries to say lightly. He doesn’t know if it comes out that way. 

“I doubt that.” Patrick is closed off, and has been since they started making arrangements for this trip, even though he continues to insist that it’s a good idea. 

He winds himself around Patrick’s too-stiff frame the way he always has. “I love you and I miss you already.”

Patrick’s shoulders relax ever-so-slightly with his squeezing. Patrick tucks his face into David’s neck and his arms go up around his middle in a tight hug before making a sad little noise. “Please don’t run off with Nicole Kidman, even if she asks.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” David strokes down Patrick’s back. His eyes are glassy, which is unfair. David is barely keeping it together as it is. He is going to end up a puffy mess weeping his way into California, which is no good for anyone. Nothing is changing. It’s a little vacation. It’s a trip to see his parents. It’s an excuse to give Patrick a break.

“I’ll be home soon.”

“You’d better.” Patrick’s arms are like a vice against his ribs and he kisses the side of David’s neck soundly before raising his face to kiss his lips. “Hey, it’s going to be good, right? You’re going to be good. That is what matters.”

He’s sensing that _I’m excited if you’re excited_ attitude Patrick adopts when he’s floundering and he knows it comes from a place of love, even if he’s really just trying to convince himself. 

“Yes,” David answers, not sure if he’s all that convincing either. “It is going to be great.”

* * *

On his first morning in California, David wakes to a sunbeam falling across his bed. 

The flight was long, Patrick was right, and David did his best to stretch and walk and keep himself hydrated and away from other people’s...microbes. His parents picked him up at the airport, which was surprising, and then annoyed him immediately with a barrage of unhelpful questions, which was not surprising.

He unplugs his phone from where it’s charging and finds Patrick has already texted thrice:

A good morning text full of emojis that Patrick knows will annoy David but that also ends with _I love you_ and _I miss you already._

A photo of the two of them that Alexis took the last time she visited. He is pressed close to Patrick’s side and holding his cell phone as if he’d been showing Patrick something. Patrick is beaming and David is laughing, his head thrown back and eyes squeezed closed, and it’s so...warm. Patrick’s hand rests on David’s wrist where he’s tilting the screen, and David can still feel the riot of laughter in his belly, even though he can’t remember the joke.

A selfie of Patrick in their store, this morning’s sun touching his broad shoulders, then gleaming and glinting at the oranges and reds and burnt umber in Patrick’s hair. 

David snaps his own selfie, wiggling over into his own beam of light, his dark stubble a high contrast against white sheets, and sends it.

Patrick’s response is swift: _California looks good on you._

David’s response is equally swift: _looks good on you too._

* * *

The next morning after he stretches and takes his morning walk, his mother offers him a single comp ticket to the Matisse exhibit at LACMA as she is breezing out the front door.

Schitt’s Creek is lacking in a local art scene—David thinks his store and his sweater collection may be the sum total of cultural exposure if he’s being completely honest—and their closest museum-ish attraction is the botanical garden, if you don’t count the museum of umbrella covers, which. No one should.

So the Los Angeles County Museum of Art sounds divine. 

He should maybe be offended that his mother didn’t offer to join him, but he prefers doing things like this alone anyway. He can linger by what strikes him and skip pieces he finds more banal. 

Outside, he stops at Chris Burden’s _Urban Light_ and wonders if he shouldn’t add _light installation_ to his Fuck-It List as he takes in the repetition of form, the columns of street lamps gathered in formation like toy soldiers. Or Beyoncé’s back-up dancers.

Entering the halls feels like coming home, even though he’s never been here before. There’s just something familiar and settled about the narrative order and flow of curated space. 

It’s been years since he’s put together an exhibition; selecting unifying themes, culling submissions, narrowing the focus into a pinpoint of light. _Urban Light_ is contextual. It responds to the works around it, to the street and the architecture and to every piece Burden made before and after. 

It’s the same methodology he applies to the Apothecary, as he merchandises and hand-selects items for the store, even though he’s only ever told Patrick that, and even then he was high and somewhere in the midst of the eighth voicemail. The arrangement of products, the textures and smells, even the colors of the bottles and the design of their labels is meant to be highly specific, evoking place and time and transcending it.

It may also be how he survived those first fallow months when they moved to Schitt’s Creek, shifting his focus from his social life to his family life to himself and keeping the pieces that mattered.

And now. He's doing it again with different criteria. It isn’t about what’s beautiful or what’s interesting or the best narrative; it’s only about what moves him. What fuels him. AS has forced him to pare down to the essentials, and what is essential has shifted. But the Fuck-It List is about claiming some non-essentials that have to be part of his narrative, too. About deciding exactly what he is unwilling to lose.

When he rounds the corner to the Matisse exhibit, some of the pieces take up entire walls, their colors shocking and bright. 

“Une seconde vie,” a voice says to his left, and David has a sinking suspicion that means his afternoon of solitude is about to get a plus one. “A second life.”

“Hmm,” David responds, hoping to keep both the conversation and the diversion short. 

“That’s what Matisse called these cut-outs. His second chance at life.” The stranger glances at David to gauge his response. “I’ve always been fascinated by his entire story.” 

“Kind of a terrible human, it turns out.”

“Well, never meet your idols, right?”

“Or marry them. Or work as their assistant.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The stranger’s head bobs in a nod, bouncing his sweep of dark hair. He reminds David of New York and snobbish opinions dressed in sleek, overly-maintained packages. He sort of reminds him of himself, before he came to Schitt’s Creek.

“Okay.” David nods and walks toward some of the individually mounted and framed pieces where color and shape become one. It’s not necessarily to get away from his new tour guide, but he won’t be sad if he isn’t followed.

“Did you know he did most of this from bed? Or his wheelchair. Amazing.” The man pops up again at his elbow, giving him an appraising look with dark, steady eyes. It’s flattering, but David tries to make his left hand very visible by bringing it up to his chin. “Matisse said it was the simplest and most direct way to express himself after his health failed. He intended this work to be a wholly immersive experience. I think it worked.”

“Well, he covered his walls in these cutouts, so I would say so.”

“I’m Andre, by the way.”

“David.” David accepts his handshake. Andre seems steadfast in his desire to take David on this impromptu tour. It’s probably easier to let him, plus technically it saves David from having to stoop to read the little signs posted around the gallery. 

“I’ve read that once he was unable to leave his home, he decided to create a garden he could walk through using his own walls as the canvas.” Andre touches his elbow to direct them closer to a mural stretched out at the far end of the gallery. “You can still see the pinholes.”

“Hmm,” David says, delighted. Up close, David can in fact see that the cut-outs still retain countless pinholes, reminders of their former existence on Matisse’s bedroom walls. 

“He felt like he had gone as far as he could with oil painting,” David says, startling himself with the recall. He hasn’t taken an art history course since the dawn of time, but there’s always some factoid lurking in the shadows of his brain, waiting for its opportunity to come into the light. 

Andre’s answering smile transforms his face, makes him seem friendlier and less sophisticated. It’s nice. “Yes.”

David is on the cusp of something. “So he just...reinvented himself. He taught himself how to make something entirely new.”

“And some would say he reached the height of his creative powers.” Andre finishes, smiling at David. “Would you like to grab a coffee at the cafe and discuss this a little further? Or we could talk about something else, if you’d rather.”

David might blush a little bit. It’s been a long time since he’s felt well enough to attract a stranger’s attention, or to notice it anyway. “I think I might be too happily married for that, but I appreciate the pick-me-up,” David responds airily. 

“Ah, well, I should have known someone as gorgeous as you wouldn’t be available. But the conversation has been excellent. Thank you for humoring me.”

David makes his leave but not before he stops in the gift shop to pick up a _Second Life_ postcard for Patrick and the _Matisse: Cut-Outs_ artbook. Waiting for his rideshare, David flips idly through the pages, landing randomly on a photo of Matisse sketching on the wall of a room while standing on a ladder.

[3:56 p.m.] _photo of Matisse on ladder._ Excuse me, but sometimes the artist must ASCEND the staircase (or ladder, as the case may be)...I’m paraphrasing of course

[3:57 p.m.] of course. you can’t just send me pics of elderly gentlemen on ladders and think that is your ‘get out of ladder jail free’ card though. Or else this is super niche porn, David. 

[3:57 p.m.] my point stands. It’s the climb.

[3:58 p.m.] okay, miley. 

[3: 58 p.m.] you scoff but a stranger did try to pick me up with art critique btw

[3:58 p.m.] …I assume they used that old chestnut: are those art pants because your ass is out of this museum? I am also paraphrasing.

[3:59 p.m.] I will not dignify that with a response.

[3:59 p.m.] Fair enough. Related news: I love you very very much. 

[4:00 p.m.] I love you too. I think I might look into some new ‘this brush has never body-painted Roland’ art supplies though.

[4:00 pm.] For fun art critiques with your new boyfriend? 

[4:01 p.m.] No. Just for me.

* * *

On his fourth morning in California, David wakes up to a warm weight on his chest and hair tickling his chin. 

“Holy fuck!” 

“Woof, David! Your breath!” Alexis is way too close to his face right now for someone who lives in New York.

He’s completely disconcerted and his heart rate is ridiculous, but he reaches for his sister again. “What are you doing in my bed? We aren’t the Bloomfields.”

She’s wearing silk pajamas and her hair is in a bun and he’s missed her so much it physically hurts. 

“Um someone keeps refusing to let me visit so I had to fly across the entire continent just to see his weird face.” She pokes at his chest a few times for emphasis. “But I’m also here for work.”

“Okay well let’s not pretend it’s for me then.” 

“It’s not not for you.” She looks him over, in that too perceptive way of hers. “You know that I’m good in a crisis, right?”

“I’m not having a crisis.” 

“You’re not not having a crisis.”

“Will you please stop saying ‘not not’? Anyway. It’s not a crisis.” He looks at her again. “Did someone tell you I’m having a crisis?”

“Okay, how about you stop saying crisis?” Alexis repositions so she’s sitting on her folded legs. He’d been so alarmed to find Not Patrick in his bed, he doesn’t even know how well he’s moving yet. Stretching his leg experimentally, he realizes he’s still pretty wooden. Alexis catches his wince and gives him a few more inches of space so he can move around. “Anyway. Since I invented the Fuck-It List—”

“Excuse me, you did not invent the thing my therapist told me to do.”

“But I branded it, so. Branding is the mother of invention or whatever.”

“That isn’t the saying.” 

“Invention is nine tenths of the law then.” When he starts to object, she holds a finger to his lips. “Shh. I’m following my bliss. Now go brush your teeth.”

She’s going to be exhausting. He loves it.

After shooing Alexis out of his room, brushing his teeth, and completing his morning routine with all nine skincare steps, he finds his sister dressed, ready, and merrily reading his journal. 

“Oh my god! You’re an invader of space! You’re a space invader!” He takes the book back out of her hands and has to lean against the table to catch his balance.

“Okay, well, I just have to do a couple of conference calls with Interflix and _Meryl_ and then I have the cutest little surprise for you.”

* * *

Two hours later, David finds himself in the passenger seat of a rented convertible driven by his sister, who is speeding down the Pacific Coast Highway toward...something.

“Where are you taking me?” He’s already on edge since he wasn’t warned about the topless nature of their vehicle in advance. Half of his words are likely swallowed by the wind careening toward his face at far over seventy miles-per-hour. Even though he is certain he’s swallowed _at least_ one bug, for the first time in months, he feels lighter. 

“We are going to that tiny little tucked away creamery Kristen Stewart told me about. You’re going to love it!” She pats his hand and her scarf flaps behind her in the breeze because everything is very cinematic and surreal.

Beside him, high rocky cliffs and bright blue sky are undercut by a rough, foamy ocean as it dips into the horizon. It’s stunning. He’s glad Alexis strong-armed her way into this trip, tired of being boxed out by a condition hellbent on boxing everyone out, David included. 

Once they arrive at their destination, the shape of David’s hair is unforgivable, but then he remembers _fresh cheese_ so the tension passes. 

“Nom nom, David,” she teases with a twinkle in her eye as she hooks her arm around his elbow.

Inside the tiny shop, he samples several triple-cremes: some nutty, some sweet, some tangy. There is a take on a French crottin that takes his breath away, spread on a rustic flatbread and covered in a local berry jam. He tries a washed-rind variety with flavors of crispy sage bacon and clotted cream, a combination he’s told was originally an accident but tastes like serendipity. He skips the stone fruit jam recommended as an accompaniment, but the cheese is still a revelation served on a crisp, herbaceous cracker. 

“And this is the _Sir Francis Drake,_ an aged cheese with the same size, shape, and base as the Mount Tam, but this one is washed in Muscat wine and topped with macerated currants,” the attendant tells him, presenting the last sample.

David’s mouth waters and he tries not to elbow his sister to get to the proffered product. “And it’s exclusive? People only know of it if they come here? To the shop?”

“Correct. It’s our best kept secret. Well, we’re our own best kept secret, but this is a close second. We like to think of it as your reward for finding us.”

After tasting it, David doesn’t think it will be a secret for long. Not if he has anything to do with it. He says as much to Alexis once she resurfaces from a minor client emergency.

“Um, David, you don’t actually live here. You can’t just sell their cheese because you want to.”

Wheels are starting to turn in his head. “I don’t know, maybe we can.”

The wheels keep turning on the drive back, until he has something resembling a plan to pitch to Patrick that night on the phone. 

“David, we live thousands of miles away. How is this even feasible?”

“Well, I’m thousands of miles away and I’m still talking to you, aren’t I? When we go online, we can source from more vendors, in a wider market. Shipping is shipping is shipping.”

“Yes, but then our name isn’t on their product, theirs is. They’re not going to want to consign if they don’t have to. They can ship it themselves.”

“But what if they don’t want the responsibility of e-commerce? It’s a tiny mom and pop shop. They’re only interested in, like, happy cows, not web design. We would take care of that, and expose them to a wider market share.”

Patrick hesitates. He’s weak for David using words like market share. Even if he doesn’t use them exactly right. “I…” 

“You’ve always wanted to expand,” David reminds him.

“Not bi-coastally! I was thinking of Elmdale. Or maybe Elm Glen. L.A. is…”

“Warm.”

Patrick releases a breath. “Yeah.”

“I suppose this is a bad time to tell you that Alexis is taking me to an olive grove tomorrow, and based on their website, I think we could source some of their products too.”

This time Patrick laughs. “Listen, let’s mull this over, okay? It’s a great idea, I think, but there are logistics to work out and we don’t have an e-commerce web presence yet, really. Why trust us?”

For the first time in a year, he feels like he has an answer. Not just a problem, a solution. “I trust us. They’ll trust us.”

“Hmm.”

“Anyway, tell me about your day,” he says, tabling it for now. 

The store has been slow so Patrick tells him about how Bob has taken to walkabouts and spends his days wandering town now like a shogun. Then they decide which movie to watch together over the phone. 

With his phone on the pillow next to him, David starts scrolling through the Interflix guide, knowing both he and Patrick will likely be asleep the minute the credits start. Fatigue is starting to drape over him like a blanket. “The Holiday; Two Weeks Notice; The Theory of Everything; The Bucket List—”

“Oh my gosh, David, no.” 

“We can start Felicity, finally. I cannot wait to hear your incorrect Ben and Noel opinions.”

“Is that the one where she cuts her hair and then the show gets cancelled?”

“I mean, it wasn’t immediate, and I would lay down my life for Keri Russell, but...yes.”

David tries to get comfortable on his side as he pulls up the first season and waits for Patrick to do the same so they can do their version of a simulcast, with Patrick’s sound muted.

They watch half of the pilot episode before Patrick is yawning louder than the laptop volume, but not before he’s googled Scott Speedman to confirm he’s Canadian after hearing his pronunciation of ‘tomorrow’ and declaring him _dreamy._

“I would follow that guy to the moon. Go get ‘em, Felicity.”

“Well aren’t you a smitten kitten. So it’s a no on Noel, then?”

“Nah. But his lips are very pillowy.”

“I feel like I should add an entry to my list that just says, ‘find every 90s and early 2000s actor that Patrick should have had a crush on when he was a teenager and let him run free.’”

“Put it on the list!” Patrick nestles further into his pillow, which looks suspiciously like David’s. 

“Are you sleeping in my nest?”

Patrick looks at him innocently through a veil of thick lashes. “It smells like you.”

They manage to make it to the end of the pilot without fading like they have almost every other night. 

“I should let you go. You need to sleep.”

“No, not yet. Play with my hair.”

David holds the phone up so Patrick is looking him in the eye. “You do know we are not in the same room, correct?”

“Theoretically.” He shrugs. “So tell me how we’re lying.”

David considers what position he misses most, if they were in the same space. He misses all of them, equally. “Your head is on my chest.”

“And my leg is slung over yours. Sorry my feet are so cold.”

David mock hisses in response to imaginary cold feet but he closes his eyes to imagine the familiar weight against him. He brings the laptop up onto his chest as if it’s Patrick and crosses his legs. He misses him so much. “You should wear some of my sweater-socks and warm them up.”

“Maybe, yeah.” Patrick is quiet again. “I can hear your heartbeat.”

He strokes along Patrick’s imaginary spine, pretending he can feel each vertebrae under his fingers. “I love how firm your back is. It’s so strong. And your skin is unfairly soft.”

“I’ve been using your lotion.” Patrick yawns, “I might fall asleep like this.”

“Patrick, are we having phone cuddling? Is that what this is?”

“Call it what you want. We can talk naming rights later,” Patrick mumbles and yawns again. “But I’m a big fan.”

“It’s very wholesome and Victorian, but I have to say, I am too.”

“Maybe tomorrow tonight we can invent phone frotting.”

“Yes. Just as Alexander Graham Bell intended.”

He watches the corners of Patrick’s tired eyes crinkle with a genuine, beautiful smile. “Good night, David.”

“Good night, Patrick.”

When he wakes up the next morning, there is a text waiting from Patrick:

_Hi. I still want to talk more about cheese but._

_I trust us too._

* * *

David isn’t sure how much credit to give the California weather for improving his symptoms. It could also be the new medication, the daily swim he’s been taking in his parents’ pool, a combination of everything, just plain coincidence, or none of the above. That is the inherent difficulty with AS—the triggers, the tripwires, the solutions—they are often all the same things.

But David keeps thinking about that sunbeam his first morning here and how it felt like a sign. 

The olive grove has hammocks.

It also has vivacious olive oil and baguettes (okay, they had to buy those at a bakery on the way) and being there with Moira Rose holds its own set of intrigue. Soon his mother wanders off to sit on the patio and David spends hours chatting with the owners about their products. He takes pictures of the beautifully hand-carved olivewood salad bowls and ladles and cutting boards by local artisans and collects three pages of notes. 

His mother signs autographs graciously (is it still gracious if you announce yourself as television’s Moira Rose and bring your own silver sharpie?) as David and Alexis munch on the goodies they acquired from the grove’s shop, swinging in their twin hammocks so David can get off his feet.

He texts Patrick his view of the sky, the frothy green canopy of olive trees, his bare feet against the woven rope of the hammock. 

[2:45 p.m.] Unsubscribe. 

[2:45 p.m.] Haha, very funny. This is an olive grove. It will not surprise you to know it is teeming with olives.

[2:46 p.m] are you seriously in a hammock?

[2:46 p.m.] no I am jokingly in a hammock. This hammock is hilarious.

[2:47 p.m.] touché. It’s beautiful. The grove, not the hammock. The hammock is okay fine meh.

[2:48 p.m.] you’re looking for one right now aren’t you

[2:49 p.m.] I do not know what you are insinuating...David omg

[2:50 pm.] what omg 

[2:51 p.m.] _product link._ That hammock has a spreader bar.

[2:52 p.m.] tell me more tell me more did you get very far 

[2:53 p.m.] _screenshot of receipt: Damaris Cotton Tree Hammock Spreader Bar Highland Dunes._ Tell me how far I get when you come home.

* * *

Since Alexis flies back to New York the next day, his dad insists on a good old fashioned Rose family barbecue to send her off.

“This is what we do,” his father announces, waving an oversized spatula at the three other collected attendees. “It’s tradition.”

“Mmm, three barbecues in seven years is more of a coincidence than a tradition, I think.”

“Semantics, David,” his mother crows, and takes another sip of her wine under the shade of a citrus tree. “I hope you are pursuing this vintner on the quest to populate your new internet venture.”

He tilts the bottle back to identify the label. “Yes, I already did.”

Wine and coffee and olive oil and cheese producers have taken their place at the top of his new potential vendor list in his journal, which has grown long enough to rival the Fuck-It list in terms of pages occupied. There’s also a driftwood artisan and a sea glass jewelry-maker and a few mixed media artists whose work he and Alexis found at a winter art fair in Laguna Beach of all places. He tries not to write down the town in all caps in an effort to deemphasize some of his surprise.

“It does seem as if you have a groundswell of additional options in our locale,” his mother continues and his father decides to jump in too.

“You can still visit us anytime, David. Our guest room is always open for you and Patrick. Whatever you two need.”

“Well, that is good news since I’m already occupying it.”

“Of course you’re welcome here now, David. I didn’t mean…It’s just—”

“David, I believe your father is feeling the aftereffects of what is affectionately termed ‘the empty nest,’ and you are the gilded feather with which he would like to replenish it.”

“Ew, David, you’re a _feather_.”

“I am not a feather.” David refuses. 

“You could also be a worm. Like the chewed up one the bird is feeding to its baby. Or an old _stick._ ”

Luckily his dad saves him while his mouth is still opening and closing ineffectually.

“Alexis, you could also visit more often,” Johnny reminds her, blithely flipping a slider. 

Since his journal is already out, David adds _Visit my parents more_ to his Fuck-It List and texts Patrick a photo of his potential vendor list.

The four of them end up sitting outside well into the warm evening, catching up on Alexis's Interflix projects and his mom's reboot stories and his dad's plans for further expansion. He’s watched the unconventional balance of his parents’ marriage for years and never really wondered how it worked; he just knew it worked for them. Tonight he sees his father keep his mother’s wine glass full, her stories well-appreciated with laughter or appropriate scorn. At the end of the night, his mother winds her arm through his father’s and he leans into her as they walk back up the stone path to the house. 

He hooks his own arm through Alexis’s and allows her to take the slightest bit of his weight. Nodding at his parents, David says, "They make it look easy."

Alexis squeezes the inside of his elbow, her tone wistful. "I think maybe it's easier because they make the rules that work for them."

“Mmm,” David agrees, which gets him wondering what rules he would start to change.

* * *

He has his first flare a few days after Alexis leaves. 

It’s a bit of an out-of-body experience waking up in searing pain and not having Patrick automatically appear at his elbow. 

For the next few minutes, he just breathes, grounding himself in where he is and what he needs to do, before he pulls himself out of bed to stretch.

He’s about to climb into the shower when his phone alarm dings with a reminder: an e-commerce web design online course he signed up for in a fit of pique a few months ago, after a particularly inspiring PowerPoint Patrick had created about online retail shops. 

There’s a moment where he considers scrapping it for the morning—it’s recorded, the homework is optional, he can do it at his own pace—but it’s also a distraction and distractions sometimes help him manage a flare.

Some of the course’s components are deadly, deadly boring. Mind-numbing. Ted-level web design puns permeate every corner (David immediately closes out of the breakout group with the welcome line: I Shot the Serif!). But once he gets past coding and falls down a card design rabbit hole, he can see how far some of his superior aesthetic talents will go toward enhancing the Rose Apothecary e-commerce pages, once he gets them built.

He doodles ideas in his journal as he goes; the pages start to crowd with typography, menu options, and product searching and filtering techniques. He sends his mother’s assistant out for supplies so he can start a mood board and really get things to take shape. When his fingers graze the Matisse exhibit book stacked under his journal, he puts a few extra art supplies on the list that are not strictly related to mood boarding in case he wants to make something less business-minded. He can’t wait to share all this with Patrick once it’s a little more developed. Patrick seems apprehensive about all the brainstorming David has done on his own here, so he’d like to have a clearer idea when he presents it.

The flare catches up to him around noon. After dropping his new supplies onto his bed, he digs into the zipper pouch of his stowed away suitcase for the heating pad Patrick told him he’d packed. 

His fingers close around the familiar casing of the heating pad but then they brush against a more sumptuous material. Patrick must have packed his soft anniversary blanket without David noticing, in the flurry of preparation and almost-tension they were having before he left. David pulls out both comfort items and in typical Patrick fashion, there is a note attached, three simple words: _I’ll cover you._

David smiles. He isn’t sure how Patrick anticipates his needs and so quietly meets them, but he loves it. It’s like Patrick was assembled in a factory, programmed with settings marked _Joyful Acts of Service_ and _Trolling_ and _Attention_ and _Unconditional Love_ and sent straight (well, not that straight) to David. Like he was built for David, specifically. They were made for each other, he thinks, pulling the alpaca/cashmere throw over his legs and making himself his version of comfortable. 

Cozy under his blanket but still tired, he fiddles with some of the homework from his web design course until it’s too hard to concentrate and his eyes are fighting to stay open. 

After his nap, he stretches again and changes into his swim trunks.

He’s been resisting joining Jocelyn’s pain management group swim, but here, in the privacy of the Rose villa’s backyard, it’s the perfect low-impact exercise for his joints. Even during this flare, the water makes him flexible again. And light. Free. 

David snaps another selfie in the bright California sun, hair still slicked back, turquoise water shimmering behind him.

He sends it to Patrick and his phone rings almost immediately.

“You cannot send a lonely man a photo of exposed skin and expect him to carry on the rest of his conversation about Roland’s mother’s alopecia.” Patrick’s voice is warm over the line.

“Hi.” 

“Hi.” There’s background noise, like Patrick is shutting himself in his office and away from the rest of the store. “You look so tan. And you’re getting freckles. I love them.”

“I have become a man of leisure, Patrick. The sun’s rays are my fuel.” 

“You…you look so good. I am saving this picture. Actually I may have Ray enlarge it and post it on the side of the Apothecary so everyone knows what a snack the owner is.”

“I will never get over you using colloquialisms as innuendo.” He rolls his shoulders in a modified shimmy until he realizes Patrick can’t see it. “I’ve never looked better.”

“Nah. You always look better.”

A beat. 

“David, you’re still gonna come home, right?”

“What? Yes. Of course. Why wouldn’t I come home?”

“Things just seem…you’re putting down roots.”

David looks at his bare feet against the stone patio. He sees no roots. Toenails that could use a real pedicure after what Stevie put them through. No roots. “No, I’m giving us options. We need options. When was the last time we had good options?”

Patrick clears his throat. “I just…before, when I needed to make a clean break, I told everyone—“

It’s hard not to drop the phone. “Oh my god, is that what you’ve been thinking this whole time?”

“No.” Quieter, he says, “Not the whole time. Just…some of the time.”

“Patrick!” David has his hat and sunglasses and book collected and thrown into his canvas bag before he finishes saying his name. “FaceTime, please. Now.”

The second wifi connects, he is staring into the disconsolate eyes of his husband.

“Hi again.”

“Hi.”

“I am not leaving you. I would not leave you.”

Patrick looks away, the corners of lips turned down. He tries to clear his throat but it gets caught. David would give anything to be able to hold him. To kiss his face. To hold his hand. Comfort him.

“Um, yeah.” He rubs at his face. “I’m sorry. It’s just when _I_ left home, I felt like…if I stayed there, where I was, I would disappear. Like, I kept looking at my life and thinking I couldn’t see myself anywhere in it.”

“Patrick,” David breathes, his voice raw. 

“Is that how—is that how you feel here?” 

“I—No. That’s not it.” 

That’s not exactly it, at least. He sees himself in every stone of the house and in every display in the store. He just isn’t sure if he sees himself in the mirror anymore. 

“I haven’t seen you this happy in months, David.”

“The injectable is working and it’s—it’s manageable. But I am not staying here. You’re not here. My business isn’t here. My life is not here.”

“You found a secret creamery, David. That’s like…your Narnia. Climb into the wardrobe and someone will hand you a double-creme.”

“Triple.”

“Excuse me?”

“The creamery’s cheese is a triple-creme but that’s not the point. It’s delicious; you’re going to love it when I bring it home for you.”

Patrick still looks miserable. “There’s a pool and sun all the time. We live in the Doldrums.”

“The sun is overrated. I cannot wrinkle prematurely on top of everything else.”

“I feel like I’m losing you.”

“I promise, _I promise_ you aren’t.” David’s heart wrenches in his chest. 

“Okay,” Patrick says.

“Okay? It was that easy?”

“No, it’s not easy but it’s…I don’t think I want to prepare for the alternative.”

“Me either.” David looks directly into his phone camera, his best approximation of locking eyes with Patrick.

Contained within David’s phone screen, Patrick looks small. He is small. But it’s the first time David has ever thought Patrick might be breakable. 

The landline rings in Patrick’s office, and they both jump, laughing at their identical expressions of confused terror.

“I’m at work,” Patrick seems to be reminding himself. “I’m at work and I have to close up and we’ll talk tonight. I’ll call you before we watch our movie.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, David. Get back to the pool.”

David is worried and his body is dripping with chlorine and nervous energy, but he knows what he needs to do.

When he gets back to his room and his laptop, he books a flight home.

* * *

It’s still winter in Schitt’s Creek when his plane lands. It’s still winter when Patrick greets him at the airport with tears in his eyes, wrapping him in the tightest, fiercest hug, rasping _I love you_ and _I missed you_ and _you’re so beautiful_. It’s still winter when Patrick helps David navigate the icy parking lot with a firm hand on his elbow and his arm around his waist, and David not only lets him, he leans in. It’s still winter when they pull into their driveway and Patrick kisses him like he’s just come home from war, like he’s been manning the home front and rations are getting low. It’s still winter, but it doesn’t feel brutal like it did.

“There’s something I want to show you.”

“Oh, I’ve already seen that. It’s fine,” David teases, and for the first time, he isn’t sure if he should. 

But Patrick’s face relaxes into a smile and he pulls David back into his arms. They aren’t even out of the car yet. At this rate, he’ll see his own bed in seventeen years. He doesn’t think he minds, as long as he has Patrick next to him. 

“Yes but maybe it’s changed. We’ll do a thorough review after I show you our new addition.” He glances at David shyly. “If you’re up for it.”

 _Our new addition_ strikes the tiniest bit of fear into David’s heart because it could be anything. A dog, a cat? Oh, there was the hammock with a spreader bar, so maybe it’s not bad. 

Patrick leaves the suitcases (including the extra one David bought and filled with his California-sourced vendor ideas) in the SUV and walks around to open David’s door, offering his hand to help David exit. 

David accepts.

He stands behind Patrick as he unlocks the front door, flips on the lights, opens their home. It’s the same cottage he left. The same furniture, the smell of dinner simmering in the slow cooker, the beautifully dangerous hardwood floors, the blanket nests strewn about the first floor. 

Patrick leads him up to the master bath. In David’s absence, it’s been transformed.

“I know it’s not California, and I couldn’t install a skylight in enough time to transplant a palm tree.” There are nerves under his tone; he gives David a delicate smile. “But Ronnie did help me get things rearranged so you could easily go from shower to sauna, whenever you please.”

To make room for the sauna, she knocked down part of a wall, borrowing unused space in the adjacent room that David uses for clothes storage. She also replaced their standard bathtub with a soaking tub and retiled the floor with a rougher slate, no doubt less prone to slippage.

“Excuse me. You and Ronnie installed a sauna? Together?”

“I wouldn’t say…together. But Karen told me they used to have one for Ronnie’s back stuff and I found a good deal and—it’s supposed to help.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen ads for medical saunas on some of my AS websites.” He looks at Patrick, at the hope and the fear and the fragile balance of both in his eyes. “I didn’t think we could get one to fit here.”

“There’s always going to be room here for the things you need, David.”

It looks like the pages of a magazine. David touches the wood tentatively. It’s beautiful. 

“It’s made from hemlock.”

David withdraws his hand as if burned. “Wait. Isn’t that poison?”

“Okay, Socrates, try not to lick it then,” he jokes as he opens the door. “The salesperson said it actually gets more durable as it ages and has astringent properties for your skin.” He notices David’s apprehension. “I really don’t think it’s poison.”

The bench inside is large enough for two. He sits down first and Patrick sits next to him, their shoulders brushing. He really missed those shoulders.

Patrick pulls the glass door closed. “There’s something else I want to show you.”

“That sounds faintly ominous, honey.”

Patrick flips the light switch and they’re plunged into darkness. He hits another button and nudges David, pulling him in close. “Look up.”

Above their heads, green, yellow, blue lights dance against the ceiling, casting prisms of color on their skin and clothing. 

“It’s supposed to be ‘reminiscent of the Northern Lights,’ which. It’s pretty, anyway.”

“It’s beautiful.” David means it. Everything is beautiful. “It’s...you’ve been doing this the whole time, while you thought I was…” David doesn’t want to say _leaving_ because if anything, he was planning for their future. Their new future. Their second life. “I can’t believe you did all this when you thought I might not come home.”

“Well. One night I did watch _Field of Dreams_ and have a good cry. But then I thought, if I build it, he will come.” 

His grip on Patrick’s hand tightens. It’s so hard to think of Patrick spiraling like that, alone. He feels worse than he did when Patrick first asked him the question yesterday, worried and scared. 

David clears his throat wetly. Okay, he needs a good cry too. “I need you to know that you are the most important thing to me. Always.”

“I know. I definitely…” Patrick makes a low, broken noise under his breath, looking down at their joined hands. He covers them with his other hand, his wedding ring sparkling under a sea of manufactured light. “I know. So why can’t you be the most important thing to me, always?”

David thinks about the art supplies crammed into his extra suitcase, the thoughts and ideas he’s had about expanding their store, the letter he wrote Patrick on the plane. 

“I can be. I want to be,” he says, wrapping himself around Patrick, pulling him in. “I want…I want to do better with that. I think I need…I think I need to find my garden Pats. And my Les Mis or the baseball.”

“You could play my the baseball in the spring, you know. We’re looking for another power hitter.”

“I think we need to put a pin in the baseball. But.” David gives him a coy look. “Do you think sauna bench blowjobs are a thing?”

“I mean, not when the heater is on…oh.”

With the Northern Lights swirling merrily overhead, David shows Patrick precisely how strong his place is at the center of his universe. 

* * *

“Can’t sleep?”

Patrick shakes his head. “No.” It’s been a long, emotional night. He traces his fingers over David’s chest and down to his rib cage. “I don’t want to close my eyes.”

David pulls him closer, scratching at the back of Patrick’s neck with his blunt nails. “We can play How It’s Made.”

“Mmm. Yeah. Do us.” 

“I’m pretty tired from doing you earlier.”

Patrick chuckles, light but still a little throaty. “No, tell me the story of us. How we were made.”

“The long version or the short version?” 

“Either one, I’m easy.”

David huffs a laugh, but pauses. It's so hard to hone in on the heart of it. It isn't just one thing.

“Hey.” Patrick gives David’s hip a squeeze. “Where’d you go? You can look it up if you want, but I haven’t had time to get our Wikipedia page updated.”

“Okay, okay I got it.” He takes a deep breath. “How We’re Made, by David Rose.” He clears his throat the way Patrick always does before he launches into joyful nonsense, then kisses Patrick’s forehead, nuzzling into the curious wrinkle forming there. “So, the thing about our story is...it isn’t done. I just think...every day we’re made. And maybe it’s always more like, ‘making.’ Like our pork buns—”

“Nah, we are gonna get those pork buns perfected, David. If I have to drive David Chang to our house in his bathrobe.”

“Why his bathrobe?”

“I just assume he isn’t coming willingly and people in movies are always wearing their bathrobes when...never mind. This is your How It’s Made.”

“Yes, let’s hold off on our crime spree phase until our fifties, at least.” David brushes a curl back off of Patrick’s forehead. God, he loves him. “The point—the point is, we’re always in progress. I want us to be in progress. We aren’t the same people we were six years ago. We aren’t the same people we were six months ago. But...I love both of those versions of us. I love all of the versions of us.” 

Patrick raises his head to meet David’s gaze. Even though they’re out from underneath their version of the Northern Lights, David can still see stars reflecting in his eyes. “Yeah. I do too.”

It’s still winter when David drops off to sleep with his husband in his arms, on the verge of remaking themselves again.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "By Way of Sorrow" by Cry Cry Cry (cover by the Wailin' Jennys).
> 
> Thank you to this_is_not_nothing for Henri Matisse: the Cut Outs and the recipe/art metaphor suggestion. 
> 
> Thanks also to MoreHuman, ICMezzo, BlueInk3, sulllymygoodname,The Grayness, and TINN for various brainstorming including the terrible museum and California vendor ideas. 
> 
> Distractivate and Viv, you remain irreplaceable.


	5. here comes the sun

“Patrick, they’re airy. Patrick! My buns are airy!”

From where he’s slicing fresh cucumber, Patrick is clearly dubious. “David, don’t tease me about your buns.”

“First of all, I would never. And they are our buns.” David imagines this is how a parent must feel when their baby takes a first step. He beams down at the dough they made together. Baby’s first truly correct rise. 

Patrick sets down his knife and wraps an arm around David’s shoulders, careful to keep his slimy fingers away from David’s knitwear. “They’re beautiful.”

They’ve finally gotten the coordination down, too. This time, they made an assembly line where David rolled the dough into balls then brushed them with oil; Patrick folded each newly risen ball over a chopstick and transferred it to parchment for its third and final round of proving. That part of the recipe is the most labor-intensive, and David absolutely plans on counting it as today’s exercise. All the work he’s been doing with scissors and wire for his latest Matisse-inspired mobile has made his fingers looser, but the success of these buns is a team effort. They’ve finally learned how to balance all the moving parts between them.

While they wait for the buns to steam, Patrick and his kitchen stool crowd into David’s space, pulling David’s swollen knees over his and rubbing them lightly. “You smell incredible. What is that?” Patrick’s nose bumps against David’s clavicle as he kisses along the line of it.

David preens. “That would be the reformulated sports balm Xander is trying out for our restock. I asked him to use chamomile because it reminded me of your tea.”

Patrick exhales a sigh of the deeply put upon. “And now I’ll get hard every time I drink my Sleepytime.”

“Then my plan worked.”

“Dastardly, yet highly effective,” Patrick laments and returns to brushing his wine-stained lips across David’s warm skin.

It’s only been a few weeks since his return from California, but he’s managed to retain the clarity he found there. The sports balm is back with a fragrance profile that better fits their other products (and David’s ever-growing need to not smell like the inside of a jar of VapoRub). He worked with Patrick to clear out part of their home office so David has more space for the type of work he’s doing now. They set up a drafting table he can use for mood boards and online merchandising, but that also has ample space for his own cut-outs and projects when the mood strikes. 

He’s been diving into some of Calder’s work and finding ways he might be able to make his shapes have more dimension, and it does help the pain. It keeps his brain engaged even when his body needs to rest. They added a comfortable overstuffed chair in the corner where David can sit when he’s on the phone with the potential California vendors and never be too far from his computer. His favorite piece of the new setup is the _Second Life_ postcard he bought for Patrick, which they pinned above both their spaces, a way of bringing together both their worlds.

Patrick skims his hand over David’s thigh and David fights down a shiver where Patrick’s hair grazes his chin. 

Even the waiting is more fun when the buns turn out.

He kisses Patrick with a smile still tucked in the corner of his mouth, tasting the tang of California grapes, of hard-won victory over Michelin-level meals, of pushing and pulling and kneading until what they want is shaped and formed. 

Soon it’s time for the final steps, which they complete with the same practiced teamwork and minimal interruptions for...other practiced teamwork.

It’s unseasonably warm, so they eat the perfectly steamed pork buns on their three-seasons porch, David’s legs thrown over Patrick’s and their elbows colliding every second or third bite. Outside the picture window, the sun is setting, throwing purples and golds and deep magentas onto the latest and greatest version of their well-loved, well-developed meal. 

After cleaning, they dish up bowls of celebratory _our e-commerce website is up and running_ ice cream. 

“Ooh, with everything going on, I almost forgot that Ray dropped off a director’s cut of the wedding video the other day,” Patrick says as he hands David his bowl. “He also gave his deepest and most sincere apologies for the four and a half year turnaround time.”

“I can forgive the tardiness, but if there is a single green-screened volcano in it, I will riot.” David glances at Patrick as they sit down in the living room. He doesn’t appear nearly as concerned as he should be, so he either paid extra for volcanoes, or he is positive they will be absent.

“You can take that up with Ray if it happens. I thought it was sweet that he wanted to make a longer cut of it.” 

Patrick deftly steers the spoonful of ice cream that David is about to eat into his own mouth, inciting David to glare at him pointedly. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s watch already.”

So they do.

Ray’s new title cards are surprisingly tasteful; the font actually looks like something David would choose. He muses about this aloud.

“You did choose that font five years ago,” Patrick reminds him, taking yet another bite of ice cream that doesn’t belong to him. 

David sets the bowl down on the arm of the sofa and out of Patrick’s reach. There are still moments where he must abide by the philosophy _what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine,_ and ice cream falls firmly into the second category.

The video starts out grainy under the tent they’d set up on the lawn. Patrick, Stevie, and his dad bark out orders and everyone else squabbles about venues while rain pounds down around them, drowning out half of the conversation. 

David turns to Patrick. “Where did you three get matching rain coats, anyway? Did you guys make a special trip to Canadian Tire on the day? Did they come with the tent?”

“Asking the hard-hitting questions tonight, aren’t you?” 

The video jump cuts to the townspeople setting up and decorating Town Hall; Ray zooms in on Ronnie at one point and then pans to the florist, who is busy tying flowers into the elaborate ceiling feature.

David sees most of these people every day. Twyla has more money than the whole town combined, and she still knits him socks to prevent sudden falls (and store his shivs, apparently). Ronnie remodels David’s bathroom on short notice because his husband calls her in a panicked hurry. Jocelyn hasn’t stopped leaving Dorito casseroles on their porch since she found out about David’s diagnosis (which thrills the Blankenship goats, no doubt).

Hairstyles may have changed but the love and support hasn’t; the willingness to put in an effort hasn’t, either. Everyone came together that day and made their wedding beautiful. He’s only realized in the past year how much he trusts and appreciates them. 

The Patrick of almost five years ago has close-cropped hair and a face devoid of bruising under eye circles. But he’s also missing the deeper lines, the ones etched into his skin from the ensuing years of hard laughter and genuine smiles. Five-years-ago Patrick doesn’t have freckles scattered across his nose from mornings spent in his garden. He doesn’t have the tiny patches of silver in his still entirely too sparse stubble. David looks at his Patrick, then the one on-screen, and he loves the work they’ve put in together. All of it.

“Has Mrs. Rose arrived yet?” Patrick from five years ago asks.

“She’s around here somewhere. You can’t miss her.” His father answers, a little mystified and a lot fond. “Let’s just say that now I finally understand David’s clothes.”

“Perfect. But I think the tie is straight, Dad,” Patrick says, and Clint steps back to appraise his handiwork. 

“Well, I promised David I’d have you looking ship-shape.”

“There is no way he used those words.”

“No,” Clint laughs. “But I got the gist.”

In the tiny room where he’d been getting ready, Patrick bounces on the balls of his feet, a tell that David recognizes as excitement.

On the sofa, David rubs at Patrick’s shoulder and pulls on him so he’ll shift more into David’s lap. He kisses the crown of Patrick’s head. “Look at you, so ready to marry me.”

Patrick tilts in his arms. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more ready for anything.”

In the video, Clint hands Patrick a square-shaped package wrapped in silver. 

“Should I open this now or with David?” Patrick asks, running his fingers over the sleek paper.

“I think you can open it now, if you want.”

Patrick slips the wrapping paper off the gift, careful not to tear it. The delicate way he handles it tugs at something under David’s ribs; he knows Patrick is being more careful because it’s something potentially shared.

David recognizes the present as the small framed picture of a vine-covered elm tree that hangs in the hallway outside their bedroom. It’s hung there for almost five years but he’s never really stopped to study it. 

On screen, Patrick’s brow furrows. “Um, Dad, did you forget the decoder ring? This is...is this Gaelic?”

His father grins. “Well, your grandfather gave that to me on my wedding day and we wouldn’t be Brewers if we didn’t make things a little more complicated than they need to be.”

“Ah well. Isn’t that the truth.” Patrick studies the frame, and the camera zooms in tightly to Patrick’s face, making it blur. 

“Your dad gave you a puzzle on our wedding day. I want to be surprised but I’m really not.” David says, turning to his husband. “So what does the poem say?”

“It’s a little incomplete because of the Gaelic, but it’s basically, “‘The elm loves the vine and the vine does not desert the elm.’”

“Well. That’s actually nice. If I would have known that, we could have hung it in the downstairs hallway, where people can see it. In a better frame, of course.”

“Of course.” Patrick kisses David’s hand before turning back to the video.

He remembers the artwork among the group of wedding gifts, but he’s never been able to keep track of all the things the Brewers are sentimental about or why. He’d long since stopped wondering about Patrick’s collection of personalized souvenir license plates from all fifty states and Canada’s provinces, or his bottles of “Niagara Falls” water, or the myriad terrible refrigerator magnets from every family trip a Brewer has ever taken. Marcy even keeps Patrick’s baby teeth in her jewelry box for reasons terrifyingly unknown to David. The framed drawing of the tree adorned with incomprehensible writing never made sense to him, but Patrick liked it, and that was enough for David.

The camera drops. There’s commotion behind Ray that sounds like wedding guests catching a glimpse of David’s mother for the first time, followed by a stream of cheerful muttered expletives as the camera is retrieved from the floor. When the shot returns to Patrick and Clint, the gift is already back on the table.

“Mind if I give you some words of wisdom of my own?”

“If there’s any day, I think it’s this one, Dad.”

“Very true.” Clint picks at a piece of lint on Patrick’s lapel. “I just want you to know how proud your mom and I are of you and what you’ve made here. With David. I don’t think we’ve ever seen you...so well-matched.” 

At that, Patrick’s face goes a little soft. 

“Your mom and I talk all the time about that afternoon we met David for the first time, when he showed up ready to slay dragons—”

“Hmm, more like moisturize dragons, if the gift basket was any indication.”

“It was a hell of a first impression, Patrick, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so impressed with anyone as I was with him. I know that there were...boxes you felt like you had to fit into all those years and I’m so glad you did what you did. That you gave yourself space and found David and that you get to have what we’ve always wanted for you—to be truly, truly happy.”

“I am. We are. Dad…”

“Just. There is no secret to marriage. That’s the secret.”

“I should have known this was the long con on fatherly advice,” Patrick jokes but he’s teary. 

“I know you know it’s work, even when it’s fun. But I think what you’re going to find is that whatever the road ahead of you might look like, when you have the right partner, it doesn’t feel quite as long.”

Here in their living room, Patrick smiles. “He was right.” 

Glancing at Patrick, David agrees. He doesn’t feel guilty anymore, for dragging Patrick along, but he’s still trying to find a way to show him that he knows he’s the perfect partner for this journey. For now, he repositions them both so he can snuggle into Patrick’s firm chest, heartbeat steady and sure.

“Are you tired? Should we watch the rest tomorrow?” Patrick asks, pulling far enough away to look at him.

David taps Patrick’s wrist with the remote and draws him back in. “Let’s finish getting married first.”

“No spoilers but…” He looks over at the screen and then back to David, his big, stupid, perfect eyes going earnest and wide. “David Rose, you are my happy ending.” 

* * *

David spends his next solo half-day at the store making vendor calls and firming up orders. They decided to cut down their brick and mortar store hours to four days a week so they can start ramping up their online sales in earnest. It’s strange only needing to be in their store a day or two per week now, but it’s been nice to have more flexibility on where and when he works. Patrick even relaxed about David working here alone, now that David is better about checking in with his body and with Patrick about how he’s really feeling. Enough that ladder usage was encouraged when Patrick lost his batting gloves and suddenly remembered David stored them with their winter gear on the highest shelf in their walk-in. ( _It’s either that or you pinch hit for me, David.)_

An hour before closing, Ronnie sets an armload of purchases on the counter, and David begins ringing her up. He’s pleased to see that she selected one of the sea-glass necklaces he brought back from his trip.

“Good to see your face again, David. The sauna working out?” 

“It’s fantastic.” He loves it. He uses it almost daily now as part of his regular routine. Patrick joins him occasionally, but for the most part, David uses his time there to meditate and do his breathing exercises. And his skin has never looked better because Patrick was right about the fucking hemlock. “Thank you for helping him get things remodeled so quickly. It’s the master bath of my dreams. Even if I had to rehome some sweaters.”

She gives David a serious look. “He did a lot of blathering while we were in there, so I might have worked a little faster just to get away from it.”

“Well thank you nonetheless.” David finishes with the sale itself and starts wrapping everything. 

“So listen. I know what happens when people find out you have a thing going on. Everyone’s mother’s cousin’s ex-gynecologist tried an all-marshmallow diet and now their symptoms are one hundred percent resolved, right?”

“What is this marshmallow diet you speak of?” David tries not to physically assume the chinhands position, but he is _captivated_.

“Not my point.” Ronnie says dryly. “And you can take this with a whole shaker of salt if you want. But, the thing I find that helps me the most is just remembering that there are still things I can control. I can exercise, I can rest, I can surround myself with people who get it.”

David nods. Sandy tells him that too. Patrick tells him that. He’s trying to hear it now. 

He finishes wrapping everything and hands her the Rose Apothecary tote. “Do you guys still go to the pool in Elm Valley?”

“We do.” 

“So if I also wanted to go to the pool—”

“Then on Saturday morning, I’d pick you up at 8 a.m. sharp,” Ronnie says, sliding the straps of the tote over her shoulder. 

“Mmm. Could we say a soft 8:30?”

“The train is leaving the station, David, so you decide how soft it is.” She waves when she gets to the door. “Think about it and let me know.”

He wears a toque and he asks Patrick to help him with his shoes and socks, but he’s ready at 8:00 a.m. sharp that Saturday.

The chronic pain group isn’t awkward, like he thought it might be. It’s nice, actually. To be around people who understand without him having to explain. He learns more than he thought he would. He needs it more than he thought he would. 

They go on outings (the landfill tour is a particular highlight) and take snack breaks and even do yoga together, which David truly expected to hate but doesn’t. There’s no pressure. And Jocelyn turns him onto a podcast about tantra that is eye-opening and teaches him more than Sting and Trudie ever could. The fact he now sort of associates it with Jocelyn is upsetting but also basically okay. 

When he misses a planned activity because he has a flare, someone will usually show up with a muffin or a bowl of soup from the café. When Ike gets his knee replaced, David picks up a bag of his favorite sugared almonds from Brebners and drops it off. He’s never really been in this alone, even when it felt like that, but it’s nice to be in it with other people on purpose, too. And it’s a nice reminder that Patrick isn’t the only one who has his back. 

* * *

David selects a good day, when he’s at a two on the pain scale and Patrick is coasting on a high of garden seedling success, to bring up the topic of the Fuck-It List. They haven’t devoted much time to it since the successful pork buns, and David doesn’t love the way his list has become their mission. So he’s been formulating an alternative.

When Patrick stops in to check on him when he gets home from Garden Club, David picks up his journal where it is laying open on Patrick’s side of the bed and asks him to sit.

“I want to make a new Fuck-It List,” David starts. “I’ve been thinking about it since we watched the wedding video and you told me what the picture in the hallway means.” 

Patrick gives him a sideways look. “Is there a problem with the old Fuck-It List?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s a problem but it’s definitely...incomplete.” 

“Is too much of it written in Gaelic?”

David nods. “Yes that’s exactly it. Too Gaelic. And now I want garlic bread for some reason so thanks for that.”

“From Gaelic to Garlic: The David Rose Story.” Patrick teases. “I did pick up a loaf of that crusty bread you like from Ivan today. So, technically, I could make your garlic bread dreams come true.” 

David shakes his head. 

“This is serious if you’re bypassing night carbs.” Patrick pretends to take David’s temperature as he invites himself into David’s nest. “You feeling okay?”

David shushes Patrick with a finger to his lips, but it loses its effect when Patrick kisses it. He’s impossible.

“I just...when I started making the list I was thinking about me and what I wanted and that’s fine, I deserve nice things, but then I thought...you also deserve nice things.”

“I have nice things.” He looks like he did in the days when they were still searching for answers, scared and young and hopeful. Patrick is still all of those; it is easy to forget. “I have you.”

“You do.” David pats at Patrick’s knee where it leans against his. “I think if we’re traveling this road together, we should be planning the stops along the way. Deciding what we want to focus on. Together.”

“Ooh like climbing K2,” Patrick says, ever hopeful, as he slides into David’s open arms. He does the little check in he’s been doing ever since David was diagnosed, watching for a guarded wince as he lands. Satisfied that they are both comfortable, Patrick settles against his shoulder. “K2 would be amazing.”

“We aren’t doing that. I mean, we can, if it’s important to you. After we see the Yankee game, or stay the weekend at your family’s cabin and fish like you always threaten, I mean, want to. Or hike that new trail that you’ve been asking me to try, up at Roberts Point.”

“Yes, it’s nice and clear, plus it’s right by the parking lot so it would be easy to get back if we needed to.” _We_ wouldn’t need to get back, David would, but that was exactly why David wanted to make this list. He holds Patrick a little tighter. “What else?”

“I’ve always wanted to go to Iowa and visit the farm where they filmed _Field of Dreams."_

“Okay,” David agrees. “What kind of dreams are they? Are they sweet dreams? Nightmares?” He notices Patrick’s shoulders shaking as he tries to prevent laughter. “What? Are they wet?”

Patrick tilts back to kiss him then, still laughing. “I love you, David.”

“I love you too.” David opens the notebook in his lap. “What else should we add?”

“Been wanting to check out the umbrella cover museum.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Okay, fine. No. But there is that Icelandic Phallological Museum that sounds...like a hard ticket to come by.”

“There is stiff competition in the industry,” David agrees. Marriage has done this to him. He’s making bad phallus puns with his husband in bed. “Ugh, we should stop dicking around.”

“Awfully cocky of us, really.” Patrick sighs, rueful. “I miss Ted.”

“We can put the Galapagos on the list.” David scribbles _turtles w/ P_ and hopes he remembers what he was referring to later.

“We should make a recurring item that we’ll make time to look at the stars.” Patrick pauses. “The real stars, not the sauna stars.”

“I like the sauna stars.” David clasps the back of Patrick’s neck lightly and lets go before returning to his journal. “Do you still want to go to Norway for the Northern Lights?”

“You don’t want to sleep in the igloo. We can go to the Northwest Territories, though. Or Yellowknife. Take a biplane. You’ve never done that before. We can watch them from the hot tub outside our rented cabin.”

“I’d like that.” 

“Sex as often as we want, whatever that looks like,” Patrick says.

“Wouldn’t be a Fuck-It List without its namesake.” David makes a note. “I want to dance with you, every year, on your birthday.”

“Good, I like holding you in my arms,” Patrick looks up at David, voice soft. “Someday I’d like for us to go on a Brewer family vacation and introduce you to more of my cousins. I haven’t seen some of them since the wedding. And we need to find the best pizza in all the Elms.” Patrick is listing faster than David can write now. “We can recreate all the walking around New York montages from your favorite movies.”

“Yes, definitely. Of course.” David adds more entries. “I’m just going to slip in ‘make canes the most sought after all-season accessory’ before we do these montage recreations.”

Patrick’s face melts into something soft, fond, and proud. “I have no doubt that item will be completed.” 

* * *

One of the entries on his new Fuck-It List is a carryover from the old one that he’s been putting off: _Tell Stevie I love her._

It goes as well as can be expected.

First, he tells her he hates the sleeves of her blouse, because that seems paramount.

“They are the boats with billowed sails,” he says with disdain. 

“Like Puff the Magic Dragon?” she asks, nose wrinkling.

He fiddles with the blouson cuff. “I don’t make the rules, but you may have to frolic in the autumn mist now.”

“It’s hilarious you’re even pretending you don’t make the rules, but Ruth got this for me and I happen to like…something about it.”

“Oh, something?” There’s no way Stevie can name a single aesthetic reason it’s pleasing to her.

“Okay. It has sentimental value.”

He’s not going to argue sentiment with a person who has a heart of asphalt, especially since he’s about to disregard almost ten years of cranky banter to become egregiously sentimental. 

“Okay, well, speaking of sentiments, I love you.”

Her reaction is...typical. “Why would you say something like that to me?”

“Because I wanted to see that exact face.”

It’s a mix of horrified and gentle and angry and David loves her. 

“David, this is why you put things in letters, so we can cry about them when you’re not around,” she says, wiping at her eyes with those atrocious sleeves. Which. At least they serve _some_ purpose.

“Yes, well. Funny you should mention. I wrote Patrick a letter and he’s like a truffle pig when it comes to locating things I’d rather he not find yet. So, could you maybe keep it here for me? Just in case?”

“You just ruined my life and now you want a favor? Sounds about right.” She crosses her arms and is almost swallowed by a rogue sleeve, so David feels like she’s gotten her comeuppance. “I’ll keep it, but on the condition that you make Patrick read it in front of you. I cannot be the only person who suffers.”

“I shall torture both of you equally for the rest of my days.”

“Thank you.” Stevie kicks at the carpet with the toe of her boot. “Ugh. I promise this isn’t me trying to get out of something but…what if you don’t wait?”

“Excuse me?”

“As much I _want_ to maximize everyone’s emotional turmoil here, I think—I think Patrick will really…enjoy getting to show you exactly how stupid in love with you he is, so…don’t wait too long.” She cringes even saying the words. “Also you’re still a monster. And I hate you.”

“You’re a monster too. And I can’t do this without you.”

Her eyes are red and watery. “You’re lucky we have pot so I can forget this ever happened.”

They spend the rest of the night on her balcony, smoking her good pot and pretending like it never happened. Except three days later, apropos of nothing, she texts: _Fuck you, I love you too. Get bent._

Baby steps.

* * *

David isn’t sure what he wants to do with the letter until Patrick presents him with an oddly-shaped package. It’s wrapped in brown paper and tied with an almost Harlequin bow; David regards it as if he can hear it ticking.

“It’s not my birthday.”

“No.”

“It’s not our anniversary.”

“No.”

“Is this a trick?”

“David, why are you acting like I’ve never given you a gift in all our lives?” Patrick shakes the package at him, semi-threateningly. It’s only partially threatening because it’s Patrick and it isn’t tax season. He is his own worst enemy during tax season. “Please open it.”

David accepts it because he was always going to accept it; it is a present after all. Package heavy in his hands, he swiftly slides his finger through the tape securing the paper and it falls away. He takes a moment. “It’s a cane.”

It is dark wood, clearly carved by hand. The design is ornate but tasteful, smooth lines etched to make the canopy of a tree, and the body of the cane is its trunk. Patrick looks on, expectant. 

“I had Jake make it for you so…”

“So there’s a little bit of the curve of your ass in the presentation. I like it.”

“Yes, please carry my ass with you always. But also, it’s custom. And if you need him to adjust it, he can.”

“But why a tree?”

“Well. You’re like a tree.”

“If you make a single joke about counting my rings, I will divorce you.”

“Not on my watch, buddy,” Patrick protests with a light kiss to David’s lips. “No, but you’re beautiful.” Patrick kisses the hand that isn’t holding onto the new walking stick. “You’re strong.” He works his way over to David’s neck, lips ghosting over the bolt of David’s jaw. “You throw excellent shade.”

David releases a laugh that could easily be mistaken as a sob. “Shut up.”

“I will, if you want me to.” 

“No, I don’t want you to.”

“You’ve put down roots here. You’ve flourished here. And while you generally require more pruning than that tree, every time you change, you’re a little more beautiful to me.”

“But I—I’m walking fine. Is this because I added that thing to the new Fuck-It List?”

“Sort of? I’ve just…I’ve noticed how you feel better, you’re a little less worn out if you balance on things. You lean on the counter at work and on the back of the chair here and you use the walls sometimes—”

“I stopped using the walls, my moisturizer left grease prints,” David confesses. “But yes.”

“I just thought this might help make it easier. Maybe. You can put it in the closet and save it for when you need it. It’s there.” Patrick’s hand covers David’s where it was resting on the cane and he touches something else. An inscription. 

David holds it up for a better view of the script. “‘The elm loves the vine and the vine does not desert the elm.’” And from those words, a small vine wraps its way around the cane from handle to base. “Patrick.”

“I had Jake engrave it in English, to discourage the Gaelic bread craving.” His face shifts into something serious and David’s chest feels like it’s cracking wide open. “Are you okay? Your face…”

“Yes,” David says, laughing. The brain cell sharing is getting…ridiculous. Fortuitous but ridiculous. “Yes. Of course. It’s just…I need to give you something too.”

David actually wrote Patrick a letter on the plane months ago, scrawling it onto the back of an airsick bag. Halfway through recopying it to fine stationery, he decided it was all wrong. Well, not all wrong, but concentrating too heavily on ‘just in case’—all the contingencies that come with AS and a life lived alongside it. Somewhere in the middle of his second paragraph, David decided he didn’t want to plan for just in case. Another thing he refuses to lose is the concept of future, of possibility, and the way they’ve always planned for that together. He wants Patrick to know there’s still a future here, even if it’s one they didn’t imagine, and he wants to see him know.

Between the two letters, he quoted more Mariah song lyrics than he probably should have, a Richard Siken poem, and several lines from _Gilmore Girls_. He also told Patrick as plainly as possible that neither one of them is always going to be either the vine or the elm. That he understands how leaning on each other only helps them grow. That even as they rely more on their friends and family for support, the root of their love is here. The letter really latches onto the metaphor, but it needs to be said. 

He gives both versions to Patrick: the frantic, airsick one and the more grounded, current version. It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure of sentiments, and David wants Patrick to have as many choices as possible, always.

David watches Patrick’s face shift through myriad emotions, each one more potent than the last. He’s crying by the end, happy tears, and he wriggles in David’s arms, kissing his face wherever he can reach and saying his name over and over like a prayer. Like a promise. _David._

* * *

It starts with a TED Talk, ends in zero orgasms, and is possibly the best sex David has ever had.

David first stumbled upon an article in Goop, connected it to the mortifying conversation he had with Jocelyn a month or so before about managing pain while maintaining a thriving sex life, and well, when he’s in pain at three a.m., all TED Talks are good TED Talks.

To say Patrick was hesitant would be a lie. Mindful sex involves scheduling, practice, and a certain amount of research, so Patrick was basically hard from the first moment they started planning.

But now, on their second attempt, they’re naked with David in Patrick’s lap, attempting to look into one another’s eyes. Soulfully. 

David can’t stop laughing as Patrick peers at him very seriously. He’s like a sex owl. “This is very weird.”

Patrick wrinkles his nose. “I can count your eyebrow hairs. Like individually. Do I need to start trimming them for you?”

“That doesn’t sound very mindful.” 

“I think it sounds extremely mindful. Minding your facial hair,” Patrick says, biting his lip.

“Okay, they said a sense of humor was good, but I don’t think they were aware of yours.”

They resume eye contact for a few seconds and Patrick almost immediately blinks and looks away.

“Yeah, you’re right. This is weird.” Patrick laughs and sort of shakes it off, the way he does when he’s walking up to the plate during a baseball at bat. “I want to try, though. Make it less weird.”

David breathes in, pushing air toward his belly. This he’s good at now, thanks to month after month of morning exercises. Patrick rests his hand lightly on David’s sternum, following his deliberate pace.

Exhaling, David smiles. “Okay, okay. Penetrative mindful sex, take two.”

The funny thing is, they started off this way years ago. Slow. Well, whatever Patrick’s idea of slow was, then multiplied by David’s. The resulting math had them taking off like twin rockets into a wide open sky. But now, sharing breath and exploring the beloved landscape of each other’s bodies, slow feels revelatory. 

Slow feels grounding.

Slow feels like regaining control. 

Slow feels like magic when Patrick holds his hips and presses in, deliberately but gradually, so that David can feel the anticipation build low in his belly and describe it to Patrick.

Patrick smiles and releases his hips. Now David can control the pace and the tiny movements—thirty strokes of Patrick’s cock becomes three, in the same space of time—and he can concentrate on the sensation. 

On the flutter and the warmth at the base of his spine every time Patrick lingers deep inside of him. On the tender exploration of Patrick’s arm and shoulder and chest with his mouth and tongue. On the clean taste of Patrick’s skin and the rise and fall of his sternum as they trade inhale for exhale. 

“I don’t know if I’m doing this right,” Patrick says with his head loose and dropped onto his chest, hands stilled at David’s sides. “I feel like I should be…moving. Or helping. Or…”

David doesn’t know if he’s doing this right either, but he doesn’t think it matters. It feels good. Just having Patrick inside him, still and warm and perfect. “I think…just breathe. Breathe with me.”

They’ve done this part before, a few times, practicing without penetration, but with Patrick’s legs wrapped around David’s waist, gazing into each other’s eyes and breathing into each other’s mouths. Just like today, it was odd at first, but by the end, the kissing had become electric. Patrick told him afterward that he felt high, like all of his nerve-endings had been set alight, and for days afterward, he just kept repeating, _intense, David, that was intense_. (To be fair, he has muttered the exact words after _several_ different sporting events; David takes it as a compliment.)

It’s why they’ve kept trying. 

David takes another long, slow rise and fall of his hips, an exchange in and out of breath, and disappears into the sensations sparking across his limbs. Suspended in the present like this, his body is no longer his enemy. His attention can shift more toward the sensations—the lightness of a touch, the heat of a kiss, the way feelings of love, attention, and care radiate through each and every moment.

He kisses Patrick softly, then with more force, appreciating the pressure of Patrick’s tongue against his in the open-mouthed kiss, air still cycling between them. There’s still no friction, no increase in speed, no urgency. Whenever David feels any part of himself tense, he releases, breathing through the movement and relaxing his muscles. Sometimes he tenses on purpose and Patrick responds with an electrified moan. Being locked in the moment with Patrick causes more heat to build, more pleasure. 

There is no frantic thrusting, no tugging, no groping. Although Patrick runs an experimental edge of his fingernail along David’s spine, dragging it in a glacial arc, and David keens, making a noise he’s never heard himself make before.

When David starts to feel the tug of a cramp from their position, Patrick notices the almost-spasm of the muscle and moves them without breaking their bubble of sensation and breath. Even without Patrick’s cock, David feels full from their connection. They recenter through breathing, and Patrick strokes languidly over David’s skin. He moves his hand from David’s hip to wrist, stroking down to his fingers and wrapping with them around David’s cock.

“I love touching you,” Patrick murmurs. Patrick’s mouth is so close their lips graze, but David works along his jaw instead. His blood fizzes in his veins. 

His hold is light and agonizingly slow. 

“It feels…I feel like you’re pulling me completely out of my body when you do that. In a good way.” David lets his breath flow along with it, pushing it along the pathways Patrick is tracing, as the pleasure soars and lets him float away. 

Patrick can always tell when David is getting close. He works him up to the edge and back down before both of their hands drift to Patrick. They work together with soft pulls and gentle touches until Patrick’s breaths are just on the edge of control. He trails his hand closer to the strong curve of sinew on Patrick’s thigh. Normally, when David bites it, Patrick loses all executive functioning. Maybe so close to the edge, a fingertip is enough. David traces it so lightly, like a feather, and Patrick twitches from his ears to his toes, but David withdraws his hand and refocuses on another inch of skin. They continue back and forth like that, until the switch happens without either of them thinking about it, until it’s part of the same exchange of touch and breath and connection.

When they finally ease apart two hours later, David feels energized rather than exhausted. 

Patrick rests his head on his chest and pulls his leg up over David’s hips, hands interlocked. “So. That was intense.”

“So you’ve said.” David lets his hand wander down the curve of Patrick’s spine. He’s still a little buzzy himself, a result of being laser-focused on the moment. He feels _real_ and he feels _seen_ and he feels like his body is merely a conduit for the person he is. He isn’t restricted to living inside it; he can live outside of it sometimes too. He can feel more than pain. Even in pain, there are other ways he can be free. 

“You don’t even want to come? A little?” Edging was part of the plan, but David wants to make sure Patrick feels as good as he does. They can improvise if need be.

Patrick tilts his face up, an indiscernible expression written on his sex-softened features. “No. I don’t, actually.”

Patrick looks like he’s thinking about saying more, so David presses an encouraging kiss to his shoulder. 

“So, I know that sex means different things for different people. I think I spent a lot of years praying that was true,” he concedes. “But I also think, before, when it ended like this, it meant I wasn’t connecting with whoever I was with. I didn’t even know enough about myself for that to happen. So it wasn’t like _this_ , you know? It’s different to get here on purpose. I love it when you make me come. I love it when you don’t. All I want is you.”

“Yeah.” His voice comes out like a hush. There’s still that part of David that doesn’t believe Patrick exists, for real, in life, in his house, in his arms. People like him just...where did he come from? Who besides Mariah says things like that? _All I want is you._

“Sometimes I used to just feel like a body. Not to you. Never ever to you. But before. And I think I got really attached to the idea that my worth was tied up in that," David says.

The leg over David’s hip twitches. David feels so safe, so cared for, so surrounded by Patrick’s love that he’s never really felt like he needed to examine that. Why he’s still holding on to that. “Yeah, I’ve…...yeah.” _I’ve noticed,_ is what Patrick doesn’t say.

David glances at their bedside table where Patrick left his copious notes from their mutual mindful masturbation sessions and the tablet with the TedTalk queued up as a refresher. It’s resting on the Matisse art book with the section on his second life that David pages through every night before he goes to sleep. “I don’t have to keep that idea anymore, I don’t think.”

Patrick strokes at his chest, running his fingers through the hair there, then following it with a soft kiss. They’re quiet for a few moments, breathing still synced.

It’s nice. It’s better than nice. 

“So...we can donate some of your sweaters to charity?”

David rears back slightly. “Um. I might be more than my body but I am also not traipsing around town naked.”

“Disappointing, but I get it.” Patrick’s hand makes its way toward David’s navel and pauses. He picks his head up off David’s chest before letting it drop again. “I have to say the clean up process with this method is…a revelation. A true advancement in the field.”

David laughs, brushing affectionately at Patrick’s back in response. 

Even though Patrick is half-joking, this is how a lot of things feel now that he's trying to embrace the idea of a second life. He isn't so much discovering something new, as rediscovering something they've known all along. 

* * *

The beauty of winter is that it does eventually, blissfully come to an end. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Snow melts; temperatures even out. Patrick goes back to rehearsing the spring musical, _Once._ He’s been cast as the lead, who, thankfully, is mutton chop-free. So far.

The musical also provides enough of a distraction that David can embark on a top secret project. 

He’s pretty sure he’s been successful in his ruse when the day of the great unveiling begins like most have this spring, with near-sauna strumming, which David knows is Patrick’s way of encouraging another subliminal duet. David isn’t falling (slowly) for it. 

By the time they’re both dressed and David unveils the blindfold, Patrick is more suspicious. 

“Where are you taking me?” Patrick asks for the first, but not the last, time as David helps him into the car. Granted, after David unilaterally purchased a house, Patrick is understandably hesitant about blindfolds outside of a bedroom-adjacent atmosphere. 

David shushes him and turns on the ignition. His new life may be more simple, but he still enjoys a bit of pageantry. 

“I told you, it’s something fun to do.” Normally he would never refer to something in the vicinity of Bob’s Garage as “something fun” but trying times and all.

“Is it on the Fuck-It List? Are we going to the umbrella cover museum?”

“Oh my god. You and that museum.”

“Okay, I know I said it as a joke, but I looked at the website, and I think we need to make it an item.” 

David parks their SUV behind all the other vehicles gathered between Bob’s Garage and the Town Hall. It looks like the entire town is here. 

Patrick lets David lead him until they’re standing in the middle of the new Rose-Brewer Community Garden. David doesn’t know how Karen and the Garden Pats and Jocelyn got everything together so quickly or what half of the names on the labels next to the plant life in the raised beds mean, but it’s here now, in all its glory, accessible and available to all. 

He knows one thing for certain: Patrick’s name is on as many surfaces as David could think to engrave with it. Granted some of the signs read _Rose’s Brewer’s Community Garden_ because what the fuck is going on at that signmaker’s shop. It’s apostrophe anarchy. But the possessive isn’t exactly wrong.

David clears his throat and removes the blindfold. “Okay.” 

“David, you did all this, for me?” Patrick asks and it sounds eerily reminiscent of another event, in another life. 

“Well, I didn’t. I mean, I supervised and organized but really…it was everyone.” It’s true. David isn’t being humble. He loves how much other people love Patrick. 

Patrick is flushed and pleased and gorgeous in the soft spring sunlight. He presses his palm flat against David’s chest. “Well, I plan on thanking _everyone_ profusely.” 

“I look forward to that.” David hugs him tightly and kisses him softly. “I have also been told you might be able to grow me the good weed here, so. Please let’s put a pin in that if we could.”

They’re interrupted in turn by Ray, and Kyle, and Ike, and Karen, and then Ronnie gives a dedication speech that makes Patrick cry. Probably on purpose. Jocelyn passes pens masquerading as silk flowers to everyone as a keepsake. A Garden Pat mans a table of incredible finger foods and what David thinks may be spiked punch.

As the speeches are wrapping up, Roland has the audacity to say, “Looks like everything’s coming up Roses!” 

It’s still nice. It’s pretty perfect, actually.

Everyone stays and mingles in the garden until the air turns cool and the sun goes down, leaving David and Patrick alone to admire what will soon become another fruit of their collective labor.

“You’re getting extremely crafty with surprises, David. I don’t know if I can compete with this.”

“I’m not a marriage expert, but I’m fairly confident it’s not a competition.” 

“No. It’s not.” Patrick wraps his arm around David and squeezes his shoulders. David’s thankful to be off of his feet and even more thankful that he finally has Patrick alone. No matter how much he embraces this community they’ve formed, he’s always most at rest when it’s just the two of them. “It’s beautiful.”

David is slowly coming to understand Patrick’s obsession now, too. He remembers the feeling of soil between his fingers and the sense of calm it brought him. He can only imagine the sense of calm it brings Patrick when he’s anxious. “It’ll keep the plant shards off my counters and my knees out of the dirt.”

“Indeed.” Patrick gives him a second look. “So, you’re going to come work here with me sometimes?”

David shrugs. “Not… all the time. I do have a mobile I’m working on that will look incredible under the pergola if I can source the right materials. But I’d like to sometimes.”

He waits for the qualifier of: _on good days_. It never comes, not because there won’t be bad days, but because Patrick trusts him to know his limits. 

“Well, I’d like that.” He’s quiet for a moment. “You know, when I started gardening, I didn’t realize how much I needed it. We didn’t know what was happening with you, and I was so fucking scared, David. But with the garden, I could—I knew what was coming. I could plan and dig and know what to expect, and then figure out what wasn’t working, even if I didn’t have time to fix it.”

David rubs his leg encouragingly. “Yes. AS still isn’t very helpful with its calendar.”

“No. Its scheduling assistant should be fired.” Patrick looks out at what everyone has assembled and even in profile, he’s wistful. 

“But that’s part of why I wanted this for you. Now, this is always going to be here. And someone will always be here to help when we need it.”

“Yeah.” 

Patrick slides along the bench, stopping when his shoulder catches. Squinting at the plaque in the near dark, he asks, “Does this say ‘David’s Rose’s Bench’?”

“Fucking fuck.”

* * *

After David’s monthly rheumatology appointment and Patrick’s caregivers group, they take their usual sojourn to the Elmdale House of Pancakes. Patrick digs a retractable pen out of his pocket, plucks a handful of napkins out of the holder on the table, and begins to doodle.

“Why are you drawing windmills?” David asks, when he can no longer sit idly by.

Patrick looks up as if David’s question is the odd thing happening at their table. 

“Well, if you must know, I’m setting the ambiance.”

“For?” David takes another bite of waffles after smearing them around in some of the fresh pecan butter syrup from the ramekin on his plate, all the while relishing the fact that his very action-oriented spouse is setting _ambiance._ With a ballpoint pen on a napkin. Can’t learn everything at once. 

“Because I’d like to talk to you about the tickets to Europe I want to buy.”

David drops his fork. “What?”

“Well, I think it’s a good time to go. Ever since Alexis extorted Goop on our behalf, online sales have been off the charts.” David still can’t really believe they’re in Goop. It was a Fuck-It List miracle. Alexis claims she merely sent Gwyneth a link to their website, one girl boss to another, and that no blackmail was involved, but David doesn’t trust Alexis. Or Gwyneth. 

“What if we get there, and I have a flare, and I can’t even walk through the Louvre?”

Patrick lays out what would happen. David can take his cane to stretch his energy. They’ll do research and call ahead and make sure there are plenty of spaces for him to rest. They’ve been successfully taking quarterly trips to Los Angeles to visit David’s parents and meet with vendors; the flight may be longer but everything else is almost exactly the same.

“And if you have a flare, it’ll still be perfect,” Patrick says, passing David the windmill-adorned napkin. “All the stroopwafels you can handle in the finest pillow nest our hotel can offer.”

* * *

The next spring, they go. It is not simple, but, like so many other post-AS things, it is doable. It is not to say there aren’t moments where David doesn’t wish things were different. Or easier. He’s glad he brought his cane for all the walking they do and Patrick does what he does best—research. By the time they arrive anywhere, Patrick has already sussed out accessible entrances and made sure each venue has somewhere to sit and rest and rehydrate. He doesn’t take it personally like he used to. Patrick does it as much for his own anxiety as for David’s wellbeing, and it helps them both.

And yes, David has a flare in London and misses a trip to Tate Modern, but Patrick foregoes any bother about international data rates and practically liveblogs the entire experience, sending texts and pictures and video messages like he’s working a press line for the Golden Globes. He comes back to their room with pain au chocolate and flaky almond croissants, and relives it all with David again. 

They sit on the balcony in fading golden light, feeding each other bites of croissant and laughing, with Patrick’s aching feet propped in David’s lap. 

“Next year we should go to Japan for the cherry blossoms,” Patrick says. He has their Fuck-It list committed to memory, too.

For a moment, David lets himself dwell on everything he might miss in Japan, stuck in some anonymous ultra-modern hotel while Patrick sends him close-ups of cherry blossoms and temples. On the other hand, if they don’t go, the only thing he’d really miss is moments like this.

“We should go,” he says, looking out over the railing as the lights of London turn on below them.

Patrick was right. Flare or not, this is perfect.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from...the Beatles song of the same name.
> 
> Shout out to Vandaveer’s “Beat, Beat, My Heart” for always having a line that came in second when I was naming chapters.

**Author's Note:**

> In this work, David is diagnosed with a chronic pain condition called ankylosing spondylitis. If you would like more information on this condition, please check out this website [Ankylosing spondylitis](https://ankylosingspondylitis.net/). 
> 
> I researched to give a realistic depiction of what ankylosing spondylitis looks and feels like for someone who is living with it. I may have missed something, however, so please let me know in the comments if I have. 
> 
> While ankylosing spondylitis is not terminal (everyone in the story survives, I promise), it can be progressive and there is not a cure. 
> 
> The story itself is more about love, acceptance, and how we learn to decide what we want to keep.
> 
> A set of deep and abiding thanks to my betas [vivianblakesunrisebay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivianblakesunrisebay/pseuds/vivianblakesunrisebay) and [Distractivate ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Distractivate/pseuds/Distractivate). I do not not know how I could have done this without you (and I do not plan on it so). This started as one thing and ended up as another and at every point, you were by my side, holding my hand, patting my hair, reading and rereading. This whole fic is truly a labor of love and support. (I’m trying to find an anarchic apostrophe joke to make but my brain has collapsed.)
> 
> Thank you also to [rockinhamburger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockinhamburger/pseuds/rockinhamburger/works%22) for the sensitivity read (and cheerleading).
> 
> Please please please let me know what you think through comments, kudos, and general vibes. Thank you for reading!


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